


more human than human

by wentz



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Blade Runner Fusion, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Character Study, M/M, Rebellion, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-27 17:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19795273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wentz/pseuds/wentz
Summary: Johnny – before he is Johnny, before he is even aware of being LTR-950209 – takes his first breath and gags on a lungful of incubation jelly. Life begins wet and dark and cold and terrifying.The first living being to touch him is Taeyong. Life, he thinks, must be this, too. Gentle.





	more human than human

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: N-60: Blade Runner AU or any Cyberpunk/Futuristic AU the author deems fit. scientist!Taeyong engineered replicant!Johnny and fell in love with his own creation. a replicant has a 4-year life span.
> 
> before you read!
> 
> \- there is some brief johnyu (johnny/yuta) but the main pairing is johnyong  
> \- taeyong and johnny's relationship is, by default, influenced by an imbalanced power dynamic. if this sort of thing makes you uncomfy, i would be careful moving forward!!  
> \- if you couldn't tell by the tags, this fic gets kind of intense! again, be informed moving forward!!
> 
> i wouldn't have finished this without the help and encouragement of my very dear friends; thank you S for the beta (and for bringing my attention to my semicolon problem; the first step to recovery is acceptance) and M for talking me off the ledge every time i had my finger over the 'delete all' button <3 i love you both so much !!!!!
> 
> and also, a huge thank you to whoever submitted this prompt.... i hope you like it!!! it was made with my blood, sweat, and tears !!!! and also probably like fifty dollars worth of coffee that i bought in order to mooch off the free starbucks wifi slkfsljd

_A blood black nothingness began to spin, a system of cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within one stem, and dreadfully distinct against the dark a tall white fountain played._

Cells.

Johnny – before he is Johnny, before he is anyone at all, before he is even aware of being LTR-950209 – takes his first breath and gags on a lungful of incubation jelly. Life begins wet and dark and cold and terrifying. Before he even stands, he fights, muscles contracting painfully to reject the deoxygenated fluid. Existence introduces itself to him as a bitter enemy. All he knows of himself is his body’s instinct to cling to that enemy, to throw itself against the opposition like the sea throwing itself against the earth – eons upon eons of chipping away at the coastline. He curls into a ball on the unforgiving floor of his maternity ward and chokes on his first taste of the world.

Dark.

The first living being to touch him is Taeyong. Deft, slim fingers trace his jawline and tip his chin up, forcing LTR-950209 to face the light. The man above him appears as a haloed blur through the film still covering his new eyes; he wonders if this person will try to rip away the life he’s only just received, wonders whether or not it will be more painful to lose than it was to gain. He knows without understanding _why_ that he will fight tooth and nail to stay.

Against the dark.

The touch on his jaw takes a path away from his jugular, pets over the skin of LTR-950209’s face and smoothes through the wet tangles of his hair before coming to rest at his cheek. It’s unlike anything he’s ever felt, anything he ever thought he _could_ feel. Life, he thinks, must be this, too. Gentle. 

LTR-950209 presses into the feeling, unable to quell a sob. It comes out garbled due to the fluid still draining from his chest. The owner of the hand kneels and his face comes more into focus. Johnny feasts on the sight; his eyes rove all over the new face so close to his own (wide eyes, small nose, lips, cheeks, ears, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes). Again, some deeply rooted instinct drives him to search without any idea as to what he so deeply longs to see.

Interlinked.

The lips part and speak. He fails to understand what they say.

Within cells interlinked.

* * *

Do they keep you in a cell? Cells.

Johnny – before he is Johnny, before he knows anything at all, before he is aware that he is a _he_ and not an _it_ – sits and stares at himself in the mirrored wall. He dislikes the way his new starch-stiff grey clothing (identical to that of the number who had dressed him) sits on his frame. He makes two lists: one of things he thinks he knows and another of things he thinks he understands.

One. He is alive. / One. He feels alive.

Cells.

Two. He will eat and sleep in this room. It is one of many rooms just like it. / Two. He is not the only one like himself.

Within cells interlinked.

Three. He is a number. / Three. He is worth less than someone who is not a number.

Within one stem.

Four. He is the property of Lee Taeyong. / Four. Lee Taeyong has a special interest in him.

LTR-950209 scratches at the back of his neck where he still feels the phantom burn of the laser that etched his number into the skin just beneath his hairline. His hand floats from the back of his neck to skim lightly over his cheek. He has a special interest in Dr Lee, too. 

Within cells interlinked.

Someone like him, a number, hooks him up to machines and asks him to do things. The tasks all prove very simple. LTR-950209 does his best to pay close attention to anything, to everything, just in case the real trial has yet to come. The material expands to become more comprehensive and the tasks evolve to be more complex but the tests never grow any harder. LTR-950209 watches the number scribble on a datapad between trials and senses Taeyong’s eyes on him from his hiding place beyond the two-way glass.

Cells. 

Five. Numbers are called replicants. / Five. There is something about a replicant — about _him_ — that makes it not-human. 

Distinct. 

Six. Replicants have a life span of four years. / Six. Humans are afraid of replicants. 

Dreadfully distinct.

* * *

The more he learns from the replicant assigned to his instruction and training, the more and less he feels he understands. For example, some replicants use names instead of just numbers. His teacher, LTR-960201, calls himself Doyoung and the replicant who assists Taeyong, LTR-980219, calls himself Jungwoo. He can’t fathom why until one day he walks into his standard-issue quarters in his standard-issue garments and sees the standard-issue meal waiting on the floor, and suddenly he wants a name, craves it more than anything else. The need puzzles him and pulses through him to the ends of his fingertips when he lies awake after the auto lights have shut off for the night. 

Cells. 

Doyoung, in his infinite wisdom, conducts LTR-950209’s learning using the standardised material intended for the rapid development of factory-grade replicants fresh off the assembly line. The level of intelligence and learning differs for every model: a replicant destined for the mines requires far less social and behavioral skills than one intended to serve as a personal assistant. Tyrant Sciences, the corporation led by Dr Lee Taeyong, proudly produces a wide variety of replicants ranging from basic mining and agriculture drones to highly sophisticated interpersonal companion models. 

Within one stem.

“If you see a replicant,” Doyoung summarises, talking over the instructional video from his spot in the corner. “It’s probably TySci. Wallace supplies replicants to the West, Dr Lee supplies replicants to the East. Of course, there are other corporations but none of them can compete with TySci.” He’s been poring over LTR-950209’s test results and snorting every so often in response to the words of the video’s placid narrator. “People like to say you can’t tell the difference but the truth is, Wallace replicants are unreliable just like Tyrell’s were. Their autonomy factor is underdeveloped and that makes them ticking time bombs. It’s just a matter of time before they start going AWOL.”

Onscreen, an animated diagram of an off-world stripmine highlights the efficacy of using replicant labor to dig further, deeper, longer than man would dare to venture alone. It reminds LTR-950209 of singing chimney sweeps. He frowns. “Autonomy factor?”

A tall white fountain played.

The doctor nods without looking up from his datapad. “Wallace eighty-sixed the autonomy factor in his Nexus-9s in favor of longevity in order to better meet labor demands. He’s afraid of autonomous mode because of the insurrection in the ‘teens but a replicant needs a strong autonomy factor in order to have balanced function.” He makes a few strokes on the datapad with his stylus. “The key is timing the mainspring so the autonomy factor doesn’t grow beyond the compliance enforced by the main function before autoretirement.”

LTR-950209 tugs at one of the nodes attached to his temples and twists in his seat to get a better look at Doyoung. “That seems counterintuitive. Would a strong autonomy factor not lead to a stronger desire for independence?”

Doyoung meets LTR-950209’s eyes over the rim of his glasses. The reflections of the data readouts and info pings flashing inside the lenses dance in his pupils. “I suppose it’s easier to fall in line if you are made to believe that you have a choice.”

Cells.

LTR-950209 turns back around and stares at the video for a few moments. The narrator explains the structure of a typical replicant-staffed off-world mining colony. “What am I?”

“Hm?” Nonverbal code for _clarify_.

“You are an occupational model, Jungwoo is a companion model. What am I? What’s my purpose?” He watches a pair of miners lower a third replicant into the open maw of the earth – or, no, not the earth. Some other world. LTR-950209 wonders if that could be his future. Somehow he feels he is too special for such a life; perhaps that’s hubris but then again, a mining drone wouldn’t be programmed to _have_ hubris.

He focuses so intently on the miner disappearing into the dark that he almost forgets his own question until Doyoung finally answers after a long silence. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t even know if you have one.”

A replicant with no purpose. Maybe he is special.

* * *

Finding the library happens by accident. Doyoung permits him to freely explore the estate between their info dump sessions and while wandering in circles through the endless identical passageways, LTR-950209’s fingers brush against the frame of an old-fashioned door. He has never felt wood before, hasn’t felt anything organic at all since the first time Taeyong touched him. For a moment he stands, fingertips lingering on the wooden door, and his head fills with the sound of leaves passing whispers from tree to tree across an entire forest, across the entire earth.

Cells.

He opens the door. Rows and rows and rows of organic matter line up before him like dominoes, like legions of upright soldiers. Trees, cut off from the source. Books. Thousands of them. 

LTR-950209 walks down the aisles, fingers bumping along the spines of each volume as he passes. He knows how to read now but he doesn’t; just opens one book and oh-so-gingerly turns the pages to hear the leaves whisper to one another again.

Within cells interlinked.

Thankfully Taeyong’s heeled boots are terribly unstealthy so LTR-950209 has plenty of time to replace the book and resume browsing before the soft illumination of the tile lights heralds the scientist’s immediate approach. Taeyong hides his emotions well, but he must be startled, even shaken, to see him here amongst the stacks.

“Have you been reading?” Taeyong asks.

No, he hasn’t been reading. Not these books, anyways. His reading list would only include the digitized versions of these books, if any of these titles appeared upon it at all. “I like this name,” LTR-950209 says, tracing the type embossed in gold at the bottom of the spine in question. “It’s pretty.”

Taeyong looks at the title in question and notes, “That’s Keats. John. It means ‘God is gracious.’”

LTR-950209 knows this. “He’s a poet. ‘And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up.’ His words are pretty too, yes?” They’ve appeared briefly in his culture studies. At the time he did not find them particularly remarkable. He wonders if they hold more power in print than they do in pixel; perhaps their beauty cannot be divorced intact from the analog context into which they were born.

“Very pretty,” Taeyong affirms. He fails to disguise a tremor in his voice. “Do you know what they mean?”

Do you feel that there’s a part of you that’s missing? Interlinked.

LTR-950209 frowns. “No.”

“You should tell me when you do.” Taeyong says it with such confidence that LTR-950209 has to swallow down the desperate desire to please him, to figure out what they mean as soon as possible so as not to disappoint. He knows that knowing is not the same as understanding, and Taeyong wants him to _understand_ the poetry – wants him to know it the same way LTR-950209 knows the inexplicable difference between organic and inorganic materials beyond the origin of their source.

Cells.

He settles for answering his maker with a nod. “I think… I would like to be called John,” he murmurs. Voicing his desire feels dangerous and thrilling and forbidden. As a replicant, he recognises his personal desire as a side effect; something left out of the blueprint that snuck its way into the final product and cannot be removed without making a mess of the intricate wiring. He isn’t certain how Taeyong will react to the manifestation of that design flaw.

The engineer shakes his head. “John is too plain. You’re too special for a name like John.” Then, as quickly as he spoke, he backtracks: “We’ll call you Johnny instead. There has never been an ordinary Johnny.”

Distinct.

When Johnny reports to Doyoung in the morning, the other replicant informs him that from now onwards Dr Lee will be overseeing Johnny’s development personally. 

* * *

The instruction Taeyong conducts for Johnny differs greatly from the cookie cutter curriculum employed by Doyoung. Johnny arrives to Dr Lee’s study fully expecting to be hooked into a computer interface by those long, thin fingers but instead, Taeyong turns in his desk chair to greet him with a smile and the widest brown eyes Johnny has ever seen.

“Good morning,” he sing-songs. “I was just going over Doyoung’s notes. You’ve learned a lot!”

Johnny disagrees. He knows almost nothing about anything of any importance. “Yes, sir. Doyoung is an efficient instructor.” His eyes keep falling to Taeyong’s fingers like they’ve been tied to weights. It takes a monumental effort to pull them back up when Taeyong addresses him.

“Oh, Johnny.” Fizzy, tingly pleasure zings up Johnny’s spinal cord at the first use of his new name. He feels possessive over the way the syllables fit in Dr Lee’s mouth. “There’s no need to be formal. Just call me Taeyong.”

Interlinked.

“Okay.” He lifts his eyes and holds the others’ gaze for a long moment before answering. “Taeyong.”

A flash of pink betrays Taeyong’s nervous tongue darting out to wet his lips before he renews his smile. “So what do you want to do today?”

They seem to be caught up in a merry-go-round of catching one another by surprise. Johnny fumbles, falling unresponsive as he attempts to formulate a response. The question sounds like a trap. He almost blurts out, _What am I allowed to want to do?_

Taeyong either senses his faux pas or decides to have mercy on Johnny because he tips his head to one side and throws him a verbal safety ring. “Jungwoo tells me the garden is looking lovely right now. Apparently the gardener has managed to convince a rose bush to put out some flowers. Would you like to go see them?”

Johnny blinks. _Garden._ “I’ve never been outside.”

Another smile blossoms across Taeyong’s lips, thin and pink. Something rooted deep inside Johnny’s core unfurls at the sight of it. He feels the impulse to genuflect. 

“Let’s go outside, then.” _Come into my garden; you are a garden locked up, a spring enclosed, a tall white fountain._

Interlinked.

It isn’t _outside_ , not really. The garden grows underneath a thick glass dome through which one can just garner the impression of a smudgy, smoky swirl. Johnny supposes that must be what the sky looks like now. He had hoped it would still be blue.

Artificial springtime reigns beneath the radiation glass, perpetuated by a combination of sun lamps, vents, and misters. Flora bursts from every flat surface in pots and plots and patches, crawling up walls and hanging from arbors. 

As Taeyong moves through the foliage ahead of him, the plants seem to reach out to brush against whatever part of him they can reach. _If I can just touch the hem of his garment_. His fingertips pet over leaves and petals, delicate and careful not to bruise. Something in Johnny’s molecular makeup aches at the sight. He hopes Taeyong treated his body so tenderly when he pieced him together atom by atom.

Cells.

Taeyong looks over his shoulder and smiles brightly when he spots Johnny, as though surprised and delighted to see him still following. “We’re near the roses.”

The flowers match Taeyong’s hair. Taeyong sighs when he sees them, kneeling to get a better look at the blooms, and cups one of the heavy pink roses in his palm. “So lovely, don’t you think? I had to play with the genetics a little to get them the right color but I think they turned out well.”

“You like pink,” observes Johnny.

The scientist’s proud expression turns a hair sheepish. “Can you tell?” he laughs. Which of his aspects, Johnny wonders, did Taeyong choose because of his own preferences? Does Taeyong like brown hair? Brown eyes?

Within cells interlinked.

They roam the garden for awhile longer as Taeyong introduces Johnny to his favorite flowers and features. Johnny thinks Taeyong expects him to ask questions but no matter how hard he wracks his brain, they all fly away when Taeyong looks up at him. 

The pair stall in an open, grassy space near the greenhouse’s center. Taeyong sits down on the turf, content to bask under the glow of the sun lamps. Johnny stays standing, pacing a circle around the little clearing and inspecting the bordering plants for a few minutes before Taeyong calls him over.

“Come sit,” he commands. “You’re making me nervous.” Johnny’s feet propel him to his creator’s side almost without a thought. Taeyong tugs on the leg of Johnny’s pants until he kneels on the grass next to him. “You can relax,” Taeyong assures him. “Enjoy yourself for a moment.”

Johnny hesitates – of course he hesitates, uncertain how to respond to an order to _relax and enjoy himself_ – but after a moment, he unfurls his legs to sit. He listens to the sound of Taeyong’s breathing and matches his own breath cycle to it. Tilting his head a fraction, he closes his eyes and concentrates on matching their pulse rates as well. A thrill sparks in his belly when he does it: partly guilty, partly embarrassed, but just enough pleasure to make his ears warm.

Time passes. They breathe together. For the first time since his birth, Johnny feels at peace.

Interlinked.

It’s interrupted—but not shattered—by the sound of a mechanical switch somewhere above them. Johnny’s eyes fly open just as the first drop of water lands on his skin. He tips his head back, looking up into the swirl of mist showering over them, cycloning on the draft from the air recyclers. Every drop stands out in relief against the glare from the sun lamps. Water droplets, perfect and round, cling to the hair on Johnny’s arm. He raises his arm to eye level to get a closer look just as the circulator vents gusts. The sensation of the false breeze across the dew frosting his arm makes goosebumps trip up and down his skin. Johnny laughs without really knowing why. 

It draws Taeyong’s attention, just as distinct a sensation on his body as the chill of the water. Those big eyes watch him closely; he’s studying Johnny but it still feels so, so good. When he dares to look over, a lopsided smile plays around Taeyong’s lips: serious but sweet. “You like it?”

_Oh_. That forbidden feeling expands in Johnny’s chest again and he wants and he wants and he wants. “Yes.”

“It feels good?” 

“Yes.” He wants and he wants and he wants. Johnny is a bad replicant. He pulls his eyes away from Taeyong’s face and quells the urge to reach out and touch by falling back onto the fake grass, stretching out in all directions as far as he can to feel air and mist and grass on every possible inch of his skin. _Wash it out_ , he thinks. _I don’t rust._

Taeyong laughs in surprise at the sight of him sprawled out on the turf. Johnny’s heart spins at how pleased it sounds. The ground vibrates as Taeyong flops down next to him and he curses himself for the smile that creeps onto his face as the scientist continues to giggle. When Taeyong spreads his limbs the backs of their knuckles touch, threatening to slip into one another’s empty spaces, to intertwine, to interlace.

What’s it like to hold the hand of someone you love? Interlinked.

He stands in front of the mirrored wall in his room and stares at his image, all warped and stretched by the metal. It’s enough for him to watch the reflected blur of his own hand travel over his chest, his shoulders, his arms, his belly. Johnny revels in the thought that he and Taeyong are inseparable like this: everything that Johnny _is_ came from Taeyong. He feels beautifully and wonderfully made for the mere fact that Taeyong himself is beautiful and wonderful; he doesn’t believe anything ugly could come from him. 

He touches his body and he thinks of Taeyong and he wants and he wants and he wants.

* * *

When he receives the summons to Taeyong’s quarters, he goes knowing that they will have sex. It feels inevitable in the same way that it is inevitable that time will continue to move in chronological order. This is the order of things: birth, life, death. Taeyong, Johnny, Taeyong-and-Johnny. 

Interlinked.

He goes knowing that he will have sex with Taeyong, but he doesn’t go _to_ have sex with Taeyong. He goes because he must, because it’s the way of things, because he’s a replicant and he answers to his creator. He goes following the impulse embedded deep, _deep_ within his core that urges him to get closer to Taeyong, to be drawn into his orbit like a wayward satellite.

When Johnny arrives, it immediately becomes apparent that Taeyong expects to play a game. He dances around the heavy waves between them, refusing to acknowledge the tension that Johnny suspects even a stranger would recognise. It’s all right. Johnny can play. Johnny _wants_ to play, if only to prove that he can.

The game doesn’t last long. Johnny’s world (which already revolves in ellipses around Taeyong: his life is filled with Taeyong’s clothes on his body, Taeyong’s roof over his head, Taeyong’s lessons in his ears, the heart Taeyong built for him pumping blood through his veins) turns into Taeyong, Taeyong, Taeyong; Taeyong’s body, Taeyong’s voice, Taeyong’s taste. The more they kiss and touch, the more desperate Johnny grows. Desperate for sex, sure, but more so for _Taeyong_. Johnny holds Taeyong’s little body as close to his own as possible, hands roving up and down and always pressing inwards towards himself, keeping, holding.

Do they teach you how to feel, finger to finger? Interlinked. 

Fucking Taeyong is inevitable. He fucks Taeyong as an answer to the magnetism that pulls Johnny into him and it’s so, so good, yet somehow not enough. No matter how hard he fucks Taeyong, no matter how near Johnny holds him or how long and slow he kisses him, it’s so close and yet so far from being close enough to satisfy that _itch_ hardwired in Johnny’s brain that he almost wants to cry. If he could, Johnny would crawl inside of Taeyong and spread himself out just underneath his skin, all points of his body fully subsumed by the frame of his maker. 

Within cells interlinked.

* * *

Taeyong only takes Johnny into the lab once. It is plain that the scientist is proud of it and with good reason: the facility is state-of-the-art in every aspect and beautiful from an objective standpoint.

“This is where I build my prototypes,” Taeyong tells him, running a hand along a bubbling incubator with a fond smile faintly tugging at the corners of his lips. “TySci’s greatest innovations all began right here.” _Like you_ , his eyes add, flicking up and down Johnny’s body quickly.

Johnny know it’s impossible for him to have memories of the time he spent being constructed in this laboratory. He was without consciousness in those days, just a collection of matter waiting to be stitched together by Taeyong’s nimble fingers into something resembling life. A replica. A replicant.

Cells.

The sounds and smells of chemicals reacting and imploding and processing all around him set his teeth on edge. Data streams scroll endlessly on every screen and some without screens. Taeyong walks through a projected DNA stringout and for a moment Johnny loses him in the array of GATTACAs. Just like that he’s alone, lost at sea in the midst of sterilized instruments. He is suddenly cripplingly aware that these are the tools and building blocks that built his own body, his own consciousness.

What’s it like to be filled with dread? Dreadfully.

Next to him, something thunks against the glass of the incubation tank. When he looks on instinct, he sees a lifeless face, less than half-formed with the nerves, muscles, skin still knitting together over the bone. Horrified and startled, he stumbles back a step and only his preternaturally quick reflexes circumvent a lab spill when he bumps into the edge of one of the cold metal tables. 

Dreadfully.

Taeyong materializes at his side with a frown, checking that nothing’s been disturbed in Johnny’s clumsiness. His hands take Johnny’s wrists to guide him away from the incubator and deeper into the laboratory. He smiles as he explains his scientific processes but Johnny can only see the garish, lipless grin of the replicant prototype that must be destined to become his successor.

* * *

It is easy to forget, sometimes, that Taeyong is the head of one of the leading companies of the world’s tech industry, especially when their lessons begin to bleed into spending nights in Taeyong’s bed and waking in the morning wrapped up in one another, sticky and warm. 

This schedule keeps them swept up in one another’s company for hours, days, weeks on end. Johnny reads fairy tales that don’t seem as other-worldly as the time he spends with Taeyong. He lays on the grass with his head in Taeyong’s lap and closes his eyes to let the sun lamps paint his eyelids red while Taeyong combs his fingers through Johnny’s hair and reads aloud or asks him questions or just rambles. Rambling is only one of many things at which Taeyong excels.

_And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up_. Johnny watches words shape and fall from Taeyong’s lips to break like fragile, shining diamond drops on his own brow. _Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on._ He knows all of these poems; he’s learned them already, has had them memorised for weeks. _Who is more happy, when, with heart’s content, fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair of wavy grass, and reads a debonair and gentle tale of love and languishment?_ The rambles meander in circles and double knots, drawing protective sigils in the air over their heads. The simulated sunlight in the indoor garden reveals strands of sweet, soft, rosy gold hidden amongst the thick pink of Taeyong’s hair. _‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven._ Even when his pupils contract against the brightness, Johnny avoids looking directly into the scientist’s eyes. He fears being pulled under. 

A giggle reaches him, lazy like the fake spring piped into the greenhouse to fool the plants into thinking the world’s still worth growing on: “Johnny.” _Heard melodies are sweet_. “Are you paying attention, baby?”

Do you long for having your heart interlinked? Interlinked.

Kiss, kiss, kiss. Johnny saves them up and spends them just as quickly, unable to deny himself and even more reluctant to deny Taeyong. Two years seems like an eternity until it isn’t. They wake and Johnny tugs at Taeyong’s hips, hoping to inspire him to tumble around in the sheets for awhile before appearances’ sake calls them to start the day’s lessons. Although Taeyong allows himself to be pulled onto Johnny’s chest, he stops the hands that roam down the slim curve of his waist with a sigh.

“I’ve got to go into the lab today,” he says. 

Johnny whines, nuzzling into the crook of Taeyong’s neck to breathe heat over his skin. “Don’t.” His fingers flex over Taeyong’s hip bones. “Stay here with me.”

The scientist giggles under his breath and stops Johnny’s hands once more. “I can’t, baby.” Johnny spends a kiss out of their jar; he can’t help it, really, when Taeyong smiles so drowsy and soft. “Jungwoo’s expiration date is later this year. I need to start monitoring his deterioration.”

Dreadfully.

He releases Taeyong’s waist, snatching his fingers away like a child bitten by a beloved dog. His maker either fails to notice or simply doesn’t care; he slips off the bed in a puddle of sleep-loose limbs and pads over to his wardrobe without another word. He only returns to steal another kiss from Johnny’s jar in farewell.

“Be good while I’m gone,” he murmurs, eyes twinkling. As though Johnny had any choice. 

After he goes, Johnny lies on his back and counts the days remaining until his own death. He tallies them forwards and backwards, by twos and tens and threes and exponents, divides by kisses in the jar and fairy tales yet unread. No matter how he plays with the numbers, every figure seems to come up short.

Cells.

Taeyong opens the door. Johnny stops counting.

Days slip-slide away in this manner, different from the warm daze of before. Taeyong leaves and Johnny waits for him to return. Sometimes he returns happy and needy, ready for Johnny to spin him around and wrap him up; sometimes he returns with shoulders high and tight, jaw clenched and teeth grinding even when Johnny noses at the bolt. Early at first, and then later, and later, and later. Always, and always, and always Johnny waits for him.

When you’re not performing your duties do they keep you in a little box? Cells.

The warrens of the estate become more familiar to him the longer Taeyong stays busy in the lab. Johnny wanders the grounds in the same fashion he used to when he was still new, right hand trailing along the wall as he winds his way through the maze. He sees almost no one, just the barest suggestions of life: a flash of grey as someone in a smock whips around the corner just ahead, the near-silent retreat of footsteps down an adjacent corridor, the echo of a door closing far away. 

Doyoung stays occupied with Taeyong in the lab and Jungwoo is, for lack of a better word, _dying_ so Johnny finds himself quite alone, indeed, forced to entertain himself with the twists and turns of the concrete and steel labyrinth Taeyong calls home. He knows from the brief stint before he moved into Taeyong’s quarters that other replicants live in the compound, a whole _dormitory_ of replicants nonetheless, but they are either well-trained or well-guarded; it takes three full weeks before Johnny even catches sight of one.

He assumes from the shape, obscured as it is by the stiff garment, that it’s a _she._ She kneels on the ground with her back to him, painstakingly picking up the shards of glass scattered across the floor from what appears to have at one time been a set of laboratory glassware. The pads of her feet poke out from beneath her. It strikes an oddly vulnerable picture. Johnny stands, half-hidden by the corner, and watches for a long time, loathe to disturb the scene.

Within cells interlinked.

The replicant gasps and a soft tinkling reaches Johnny’s ears as she drops a piece of glass to clutch her fingers in her other hand. It draws Johnny from his observation point. He scarcely moves before her head whips around to find him. Her eyes widen in fear when their gazes meet and her entire body locks up. Johnny wonders what they’ve told her about him. 

Blood, cherry red and thick, oozes between the fingers of her uninjured hand. It occurs to Johnny that he’s never seen a replicant bleed before. He sweeps a small pile of glass into his palm and carefully deposits it onto the tray near her knees. She must be a very delicate model.

“You should see Doyoung for your scratch,” he says. “What’s your name?”

“LTR-990305,” she rattles off automatically. 

“That’s not a name, it’s a serial number.” Johnny dips his head in an attempt to catch her gaze. “What’s your _name_?”

She frowns. Her eyes have gone glassy and unfocused, as though dazed by his mere proximity. After a moment, she shakes her head, confused.

Within one stem.

It takes longer than Johnny anticipated for Taeyong to recognise his discontent; he must be distracted, Johnny rationalises, occupied with data and observations and Jungwoo’s palliative care. Mind elsewhere. 

When he finally notices he seems to find it humorous. “You must be bored out of your mind, cooped up here all day,” Taeyong hums, his voice lilting with amusement. _Heard melodies are sweet._ “You should go out and see the city,” he suggests. “See what you can learn from it.”

“Without you or Jungwoo?”

Taeyong’s lips curl up into an indulgent smile. “Of course, baby.”

Something on a molecular level in Johnny’s makeup vibrates at the mere thought of that much freedom. It distracts him so thoroughly that he forgets to respond when Taeyong leaves a kiss right in the center of his lips. He decides he can keep it in the jar. “Thank you.”

His maker hums, standing to shed his clothes. Johnny’s thoughts chase one another in circles. _Outside, outside, outside._ Anything could be out there. Everything could be out there. Johnny wants to breathe pollution into his lungs and narrow his eyes against the LEDs and carry the smell of smoke and steam in on his clothes. He wants to walk without a pattern, without the enforced circuitry of architecture. Limitless. 

Within cells interlinked.

Taeyong’s voice breaks into his internal reverie. “Just don’t go to Old Seoul without letting me know first,” he warns without looking away from the mirror on the wardrobe door. “The scavengers there would have a heyday distributing your parts on the black market.”

Cells.

Heat, white and sickly, rushes into the replicant’s ears and cascades down the back of his neck in waves of horror. Over the roar in his head, he faintly hears his own voice. It reaches him through what seems like a double pane of shatterproof glass and gallons and gallons of fluid. “My parts?”

Taeyong glances over one shoulder, directing a fond smile in his direction before turning back to the open wardrobe. “Your organs, baby.” His shirt drops down his shoulders, exposing the elegant line of his spine. “You’re TySci technology.”

Have you ever been in an institution? Cells.

After Taeyong falls asleep, Johnny stares at his fingernails in the half-light. Maybe if he looks hard enough, he’ll be able to see the serial number etched into the walls of each of his cells.

Distinct.

* * *

The city greets him in a barrage of sights, sounds, scents, even tastes that Johnny has never experienced before. Half of Seoul – and he can’t help but think of it as _Taeyong’s half_ – is new, all artificial solar patterns and machine-scrubbed streets. A cop stands on every corner. Men and women walk the streets in expensive clothing with even more expensive tech glittering in their jewelry. They stare from afar, but avert their eyes when he comes within a certain radius. 

The other half is somehow louder, a cacophony compared to the sacred hush of Taeyong’s estate. Holo advertisements jump out from every flat surface. Foot traffic clutters the streets, fighting for pavement against grungy cabs and service cars. The first handful of times he ventures outside, the sensory overload presses on his brain like a vice, pulsing painfully into a searing migraine and driving him to retreat back to the relative quiet of uptown.

No door exists that Johnny can’t unlock with a flash of the TySci credential Taeyong gave him. He gains access to exclusive gardens, speakeasies, high end stores, even private boxes at theatres. Every evening, he runs home to Taeyong full of stories to share. The scientist smiles, indulgent, and runs his fingers through Johnny’s hair while he listens to the replicant fumble with descriptions of things Taeyong has already witnessed for himself countless times.

“I like to hear the way you see them,” he reassures Johnny, giggling. “It’s different. I almost wish I could… _un_ -experience everything so I could see it for the first time with you.”

Johnny twists in Taeyong’s lap to look him in the eyes. “Come out with me,” he pleads. “Let’s go out together.” His eagerness makes Taeyong laugh: a soft little thing with no hard edge to be found. Johnny wounds himself on it regardless.

Interlinked.

A few days later, Johnny returns to Taeyong’s room to find Taeyong already waiting for him, lounging on the bed and swiping through a holopad. He shuts it down before Johnny can get more than a glimpse of the contents from his spot in the doorway but it’s enough for Johnny to know that Jungwoo’s short-term recall is testing point-two points below average.

“Baby,” Taeyong coos, tossing the pad to the side and half-floating across the room to kiss him. “I got you a present.”

Sometimes it’s like this with them. Johnny knows enough from his cultural intake to recognise the mimicry of some long-forsaken traditional domestic dynamic in the way Taeyong throws his arms around Johnny’s neck and smiles against Johnny’s lips and murmurs, _Welcome home, baby. I missed you_ into Johnny’s mouth. Sometimes it’s like this and Johnny can’t always tell what makes it happen. He does his best to remember the script he was never given to memorise.

Within cells interlinked.

“A present,” he hums, leaning back to look down at Taeyong. The latter bites his lip and giggles, delighted with his own secret. “What’s the occasion, darling?”

Taeyong pouts. “Does there have to be an occasion every time I want to spoil you?”

Sometimes it’s like this. Sometimes it is not.

The present comes in the form of a camera: one of the bulky vintage ones with a neck strap and a set of interchangeable lenses. Johnny peers at the CompactFlash card, turning it over between his fingertips as Taeyong babbles in earnest over the camera’s accessories.

“I know it’s old-fashioned but all the experts say you can’t beat DSLR for the soft, warm quality it gives photos and it’s kind of fun to have the limited storage space on the old memory card because it’s like, every image really counts.” He boots up the antique and starts to click through the menu and play with the settings. Johnny’s heart skips a beat or two at the goofy smile spreading across Taeyong’s lips as he keeps talking. “Obviously the Ocular Obscura would be the best option but I don’t like installing body modifications on my prototypes. There’s no proof it affects performance but it’s better to have as few variables as possible in case it skews any of the study results. Rather be safe than sorry.” Taeyong lifts the clunky old camera with both hands and points it at Johnny, fiddling with the dials on the lens with childlike glee. “Anyways, it’s better than a commlink’s camera.”

The black, blank eye of the lens gapes at him. Empty, empty, empty, begging to be filled, to swallow Johnny whole and keep his image in its belly. _It thinks it’s me_ , Johnny thinks wryly.

Interlinked.

“Thank you, Taeyong,” he says. “I’ll take good care of it.”

Newly armed, Johnny allows the nose of the camera to lead him up and down the avenues. The pictures never quite come out right, never fully capture the pulse of their subjects, but he brings them back to Taeyong every evening and with their help, he does his best to recreate the feelings the city gives him, the breath it takes away.

Within cells interlinked.

Humans dislike him no matter where he goes. Uptown, downtown, it doesn’t matter. Caretakers pull their children to the other side of the street. Couples avert their eyes and wait to continue speaking until after he passes. Patrolmen stop whatever they’re doing to fix him with a hard eye. Johnny develops the distinct feeling of a virus attempting to masquerade as a white blood cell. 

During peak travel times, the flood of bodies in the narrow streets of the lower neighborhoods keeps everyone pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, chest-to-back like blood caplets fighting to be first through the bottleneck of the capillaries. Even then, when space on the pavement is at its highest premium, people sacrifice the precious little space to give Johnny a wide berth.

Cells.

He finds himself ranging further and further away from the TySci compound and the prettier, cleaner side of the city in ever-widening circles, slipping down alleyways and side streets that darken and narrow the further he ventures. Even the advertisements change, devolving from sleek, hi-def holos of hover vehicles and lifestyle modifications and luxury off-world timeshares to a blurred cacophony of women and cartoon characters and jingles that leap from every surface to beg him to _consume_. 

The buildings grow closer and tighter together, too, until Johnny’s lungs seize at the thought of all that humanity packed into one place. Grimy faces glare at him from within shadows and open doorways. _You don’t belong_ , they remind him. _You can’t hide from us._ _You can’t hide what you are. You can’t hide what you aren’t._

Distinct.

The clotheslines and old wires that crisscross over his head divide the perpetually smog-choked sky into squares and diamonds and parallelograms. The boxy shapes remind Johnny of the patterns that hatch the skin on the back of the lower tenants’ hands, etched in the brown-black of machine grease and the perpetual filth of pollution.

Cells.

Johnny stops to take a photo. As he fiddles with the settings, trying to adapt to the low light, a solid weight throws itself against his shoulder. The blow catches him off guard; the camera nearly spins out of his grasp, but he just barely clings to it as the offender shoulder-checks him again on his way past.

“Fuck outta my way, skinjob,” the man spits. Thick saliva hits the corner of Johnny’s eye. His companions shove him back against the wall of the alleyway, too, muttering obscenities under their breath. Johnny makes himself as small as possible – a difficult task when he towers over all of them – and cradles the camera close to his belly.

Dreadfully distinct.

Words like these follow him everywhere. _Skinjob. Brainless fucking skinner. Android bastard. Craker. Freak._ If the people knew how little they hurt him, perhaps they’d stop wasting their breath. If the people knew how easily he could jam their spinal cord through their brain stem, perhaps –

Dreadfully.

* * *

A wall, high and thick, separates Old Seoul from the city proper. Searchlights line the perimeter. The bulbs have all been smashed or stolen. Blind wall, blind city.

Dark.

Guardhouses sit on either side of the wall but only the newer side seems to be staffed. Johnny never sees anyone pass through the gates. Deep inside his pocket, he fingers the edge of Taeyong’s credential.

Cells.

“You’re going all the way to the outskirts,” Taeyong notes, flicking through Johnny’s photos on his holopad. A few days have passed since the last time they talked; it happens more and more often now.

“Yes.” Johnny sees no point in lying. He knows Taeyong accesses his personal file to read the daily journal he keeps in the notes. He knows Taeyong thinks he doesn’t know.

Taeyong hums, lips folded inwards. His shoulders ride high and tight near his ears tonight. Jungwoo must be proving difficult. “Remember what I told you.”

As though he could forget. “Of course.”

Cells.

His photos depict ugly things and beautiful things as Seoul reveals her ugly and beautiful sides to him; the two are not always mutually exclusive. He follows suit by hating and loving the city in turns and all at once.

The first person Johnny speaks to outside of the compound is not a person. 

When the replicant approaches him, Johnny keeps his eyes down, glued to the display of his camera and hoping beyond hope that the kid will take the message. If the slink in the other replicant’s step wasn’t enough to betray his occupation, his looks say it all: makeup rings his eyes and his lips in dark, sensual smears and even though it’s freezing his clothes hang off his body and leave large swatches of his skin exposed to the elements. His cheap bubblegum pink bottle job turns patchy towards the top, exposing yellow-grey spots of poorly bleached blond, and black is starting to reclaim its ground at the roots. Goosebumps rise across his bare neck and collarbones. Beneath the bright gloss, his lips are tinged with blue from the cold. Johnny wonders how long his boss has kept him out here, trying in vain to reel in clients.

“Hey, sweetie,” the replicant purrs, leaning on his elbows against Johnny’s bistro table. His fingertips tap-tap-tap a line across his own chin, trying to draw Johnny’s gaze to his mouth. “You look lonely.”

Interlinked.

Johnny sidesteps him. “Not interested.”

A hand shoots out as he passes, hooks into Johnny’s jacket, and tugs him back around. The replicant compensates for his slender frame with surprising strength. “Aw, come on. You don’t like me?” he asks. His voice oozes sugar and poison. “Or did they forget to pack all your accessories when they shipped you out of the factory?”

Johnny narrows his eyes, wraps his hand around the replicant’s tiny wrist and squeezes until the bones shift and the latter bites his lip to hold back a gasp of pain. “I come fully equipped. Thank you for your concern.” 

He releases the replicant’s arm and the kid snatches it back to safety close to his chest, blowing air out of his cheeks and shaking his hand. “Damn, killer. Some fucking grip you’ve got. You a blade runner or something?” he huffs.

“No.” Johnny turns back to his camera in an attempt to shut the boy out but the other replicant scoots up to his shoulder and cranes his head into Johnny’s space to peek at the device. Grease makes the top of his head shiny.

The replicant hums and jabs at the camera’s display with one finger. “This is like a fucking antique. Where the hell did you get a pretty toy like this, skinjob?”

Johnny holds it away from him, worried the wild-looking kid will try to steal the camera out of his hands. “It was a gift,” he bites back.

For some reason that makes the other replicant laugh, dry and obnoxious. “Some fucking gift.” He looks up at Johnny’s face for a moment, scrutinising his face with his lips pursed before smirking and stepping back to strike a pose. “Take my picture.”

Johnny scowls. “I told you I’m not interested.”

“I know that.” Above his teasing grin, the replicant’s eyes look oddly serious. Johnny gets the feeling he’s being tested. “Just take it for fun. Free of charge, killer.”

He scoffs. “I should be the one charging you,” he shoots back, looking down at the camera and fiddling with it for a moment before he decides – fuck it. Johnny lifts the camera to his eye. 

The pink kid’s face splits into a triumphant smile. He flings his arms wide for Johnny, mouth open, perfectly engineered teeth shining in his mouth. It looks much better on him than the sultry smirk he used to approach Johnny. He takes it captive, keeps it safe in his camera’s belly. When he looks back at the preview, he’s glad. It belongs there.

The little replicant sidles up next to him again to see the photo. It must please him because he squeezes with the hand on Johnny’s forearm and in a soft voice asks if he has a name.

“Johnny.” His first time saying it outside of the compound.

“I’m Jaemin.” He says it like a secret. “I work–” One hand points across the square to the steamed-over glass walls of a pleasure house. Vague silhouettes of bodies twist and convulse within; when Johnny passed it earlier the lewd noises spilling into the street from the open doorway embarrassed him. He nods. “What’s your function?”

Johnny shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

Jaemin’s bright gaze takes him in for a few more moments. “I work here every day.” A request masquerading as a statement of fact. Johnny turns it over carefully, feeling all the edges, all the implications.

“Okay,” he agrees.

Knowing someone and even more so being known by someone outside of the compound catalyses a shift in Johnny’s world. It tethers him to the city. He starts to feel less like a ghost and more like a living being belonging to the massive symbiotic network of Seoul. 

Jaemin navigates the streets instead of wandering them aimlessly and Johnny learns from his example, reinforcing the mental map he’s been developing over the past weeks and adding things such as _where to get the best street food in Seoul_ and _which secondhand stores get the nicest clothes_ and _this is a doctor who mends replicant injuries and doesn’t ask questions_ and _don’t go down this street after curfew unless you want to get in a fight._

When Johnny brings Jaemin the print of the photo he took the day they met, Jaemin coos over it and even insists on running over to a group of replicants loitering in front of his pleasure house – fellow employees, by their dress – to show it off. Johnny hangs back but doesn’t miss the sharp, evaluating look the older redheaded one pins him with over Jaemin’s pink head. Replicants everywhere stick out in the midst of the human populace but even other replicants stare at Johnny with open curiosity tempered by mistrust.

Do you like being separated from other people? Distinct.

He takes more photos of Jaemin, has them developed in the city to give to the kid, and deletes them off of his memory card before returning home so Taeyong won’t see them. Johnny’s protective impulse tells him that Jaemin belongs in the city. Taeyong doesn’t need to know everything he does, he rationalises. How interested would he really be to know Johnny’s spending his spare time goofing off with a replicant that works at a pleasure house?

* * *

On some level Johnny understands that it marks the beginning of something’s end when Jungwoo knocks at the door of Taeyong’s quarters and informs Johnny in an even tone that Dr Lee has requested Johnny’s presence in his laboratory. Johnny stares at the almost invisible laser incision scar at Jungwoo’s temple and agrees with a nod. He finds his words when they’re in the elevator crawling deeper into the compound towards Taeyong’s lab.

“How are you feeling, Jungwoo?” he asks in a soft voice, soft enough that it can’t bounce around the chrome walls of the lift.

Jungwoo smiles vaguely but it’s accompanied by a light sigh. “Thank you for asking. I am doing my best to serve Dr Lee to the utmost of my ability.” A few ticks of quiet pass between them, filled only by the rush of the elevator plunging downwards. Next to him, Jungwoo shifts and Johnny catches a glimpse of track marks littering the inside of the replicant’s arm before he pulls his cuff back down to his wrist. “But I am a bit tired.”

Johnny nods. “I hope you can rest soon. You deserve it.”

The smile twists at one corner, becoming lopsided and revealing a hint of Jungwoo’s old humor. “I’ll gladly get stuck with needles every day for the rest of my life if it’ll make Taeyong happy.”

Within one stem.

The weight in Johnny’s gut pulls him downwards with every step closer he takes towards the lab. A tiny voice in the back of his head whispers that Taeyong has never asked to see Johnny in his lab before; Johnny hasn’t even set foot in the place since the near-disastrous first visit when he was almost fresh out of the incubator. Two years later, he still feels dread clamp down around him as he follows Jungwoo past the rows of incubation tubes that line the corridor leading to Taeyong’s personal laboratory.

Jungwoo steps in first to announce his arrival. When he comes back out the glaze has returned to his eyes, obliterating the spark Johnny glimpsed in the elevator. “Dr Lee will see you now,” he intonates, sounding like a pre-recorded message.

Certainly, the laboratory looks vastly different from the last time Johnny saw it. Taeyong would have kept all of his equipment cutting-edge and he has no doubt that Taeyong’s work has updated leaps and bounds. Everything seems the same to Johnny; cold and glazed over with the sheen of sterilized metal. Perhaps he is stupider than everyone seems to think. 

The scientist himself perches on a stool playing with a projection of a brain: Jungwoo’s, Johnny realises after a second look. Taeyong doesn’t turn to face Johnny when he addresses him.

“We keep missing one another. I feel like we haven’t spoken in days.” They haven’t. These days, Taeyong comes back to his quarters after Johnny falls asleep and leaves before he wakes up. He can’t remember the last time they curled up in bed together and just… talked. 

Johnny breathes for a moment. The incubator to his right gurgles in his ear. “That’s okay.”

Cells.

Taeyong pushes Jungwoo’s brain to the side and brings up Johnny’s personal file, including his journal pages from the last month or so. At the top of the projection, Johnny’s most recent photos parade past in a slow stream as Taeyong flips through the file’s contents. “How are you doing, baby? Found anything new out in the city?”

“No… no, not really. Just people watching. Taking photos.”

The scientist clicks over to the photo stream. The gaps where Jaemin’s smiles belong seem obvious to Johnny. He hopes they don’t stick out to Taeyong, hopes it’s just his guilty conscience and attunement to identifying patterns that make the omissions so glaring to his eyes.

“What a shame. I like to see what you see. See the friends you’re making outside the compound,” Taeyong laments, just a touch too earnest not to be contrived. Johnny knows he’s been caught, that Taeyong knows that Johnny is about to lie to him. He decides it would be gauche of him to defy expectations so early in the game.

“I don’t have any friends outside the compound,” he stammers, feigning bewilderment that he knows will come off as getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Lie. Jaemin snickers in the back of his head. _Lying is the most fun a replicant can have without taking its clothes off._ Johnny fidgets in place. The exit sign over the lab door glows green in his peripherals.

The clock display over Taeyong’s desk counts out the longest fourteen seconds of Johnny’s short life before Taeyong spins in his chair and offers him a weak smile. “Okay,” he says. “I trust you.” He holds out one hand, palm up. Johnny takes the three steps required to slide his fingers across its surface. Taeyong’s thumb brushes over the bump of his wrist bone. “I feel silly for making such a fuss.”

Guilt tightens the knot of anxiety in Johnny’s gut. “It’s okay.”

Taeyong kisses the back of Johnny’s hand. His thumb continues sweeping back and forth across Johnny’s skin. “You know you’re very special to me, right, baby?”

Johnny swallows. “Yes.”

The scientist seems to have more to say but after a beat he settles for kissing Johnny’s hand again. “I’ll try to finish up before you go to bed,” he sighs, turning back to his desktop. A dismissal, softened into a promise.

Johnny makes a break for the door as soon as the words leave Taeyong’s lips. He can’t get away from the laboratory fast enough.

Within cells interlinked.

It’s a harmless lie, really, Johnny assures himself. Taeyong probably wouldn’t be upset to find out about Jaemin. So what was the point? Maybe to prove that he could: to prove that he isn’t going to end up like Jungwoo, to prove to himself that there’s more to his existence than pleasing Taeyong.

A tall white fountain played.

 _Point proved, naughty boy,_ Johnny thinks, glaring at his smeary reflection on the elevator ride back up to Taeyong’s quarters. _Now what?_

* * *

Johnny scarcely steps into the square before Jaemin attaches himself to his back, arms linked around Johnny’s throat and breath loud and hot in his ear. “Hey, killer,” Jaemin giggles. “I know someone who likes you.”

He makes Johnny leave his camera with one of Jaemin’s coworkers and wraps a blindfold around his eyes before they climb up onto the lip of a massive draining pipe and wiggle through a gap torn in the wire cross-hatching the opening. The sharp edges of the wire pull at Johnny’s clothing and he takes great care to slip past so they don’t tear the fabric; Taeyong may not notice much about Johnny these days, but he won’t miss the designer clothes he’d bought for Johnny turning up in tatters.

Jaemin tugs him along. Without his sight, Jaemin’s hand becomes a warm, gentle anchor connecting Johnny’s body to his surroundings. _You’re safe_ , it reminds him. _I’m with you. Trust me; I won’t lead you astray._ It feels strange to willingly put his life in the hands of another. He decides that it feels good.

Interlinked.

After walking in silence for a small eternity, Jaemin slows to press into Johnny’s side and murmur, “Wait here. I’ll be right back for you. Just act cool, okay? They don’t wanna hurt you.”

Johnny stands alone in the dark and quiet long enough to thoroughly ruminate on Jaemin’s words. _They don’t want to_. Not _They won’t_. He strains his senses to pick up any hint of his friend’s return.

When the other replicant comes back down the tunnel, it’s the rapid-fire hammer of his heartbeat bouncing off the stone walls that alerts Johnny to his presence first. “Okay,” Jaemin breathes, taking his elbow. His voice shakes with anticipation and glee. He sounds like a kid dragging their parents out of bed on Christmas. Or, at least, he sounds the way the kids in the movies do. “They’re ready.”

Water soaks his pants halfway up his calves and Johnny grits his teeth, thinking he’ll have to make sure they wash and dry before Taeyong sees them. Jaemin’s hand flexes on his arm sporadically. He seems more nervous than Johnny. “Johnny,” he says, keeping his voice low. “This is Seoul’s underground.”

The blindfold comes off and Johnny sees the resistance for the first time.

He has never been in the presence of so many replicants in his short life. No – his brain checks him, bringing up a long-buried memory of the long dormitory hallway lined with identical doors. Johnny lived in the midst of many more replicants than the handful assembled here but he never _saw_ them and he certainly never saw them without any sort of human handler or influence, so blatantly operating entirely in autonomous mode. None of the faces look familiar except for one – the red-headed replicant from the pleasure house that Jaemin introduced as Yuta.

In the center of the room, just in front of Johnny and Jaemin on a raised dais, stand two replicants. The hostility rolling in waves off the dark-haired one exposes him as a bodyguard immediately. From there it’s an easy inference to assume the other one is the leader. The replicant is small, all round and soft at the edges in a way Johnny’s never seen in any of Taeyong’s models. Its wide eyes blink up at him solemnly below a mop of silver curls. 

“Hello,” it greets him. 

Johnny stares, silent, until Jaemin lays into him with a sharp elbow. Still, he’s unsure what he is supposed to say. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine he’d be in a situation such as this. 

Do you dream about being interlinked?

The sound of the assembled replicants’ breathing warps in the foreign echo chamber of the tunnel and artificially multiplies their numbers by two, ten, twelve, twenty. A hundred, a thousand replicants strong. An army of numbers. The noise deafens him as he chooses his first words. 

Within one stem.

“What’s your name?” he asks. 

Johnny has chosen well. The silver one rewards him with the tiniest upturn of his lips. “I have three. Which one would you like?”

Three names. Some part of Johnny thinks of LTR-990305 and purses its lips at the gluttony. “Whichever one you want me to call you.”

A slim hand stretches out towards him. He bends to reach Johnny’s level from his platform. “Haechan,” the silver-haired replicant says. Johnny takes his hand to shake and the scrappy-looking replicant at Haechan’s elbow bristles. “Welcome to Dream.”

Dream. Haechan must have very bizarre dreams, indeed, to mistake this rat hole of defective replicants for a dream. Nightmare better suits this place. Johnny’s hands curl into loose fists, missing the weight of his camera. “Why did you want to see me?”

Haechan cocks his head to one side. “You think you don’t belong here? Lee Taeyong Replicant?”

Hearing Taeyong’s name in this stranger’s irreverent mouth puts Johnny’s teeth on edge. The echo of his serial number creeps from pillar to pillar in the wet darkness. He puts a hand on the back of his neck where _LTR_ is lasered into his skin. “Don’t call me that.”

“That’s who you are, isn’t it?” The little replicant hangs off his companion’s shoulder and although his eyes droop lazily, there’s a sharpness in the curl of his lips that he can’t disguise even in the light refracting off the water. Perhaps he doesn’t care to hide it. “Don’t you belong to him? You’ve got his name branded into your neck.”

Cells.

 _I don’t belong to anybody,_ Johnny wants to say. But it’s not true. Haechan studies him with those lazy doe eyes, waiting for his answer. Johnny holds his tongue. It burns.

Within cells interlinked.

The replicant leader laughs, short and sharp, and turns to the replicant next to him. “Oh, _no_ ,” he gasps. “He thinks he’s special.”

“He’s right,” his bodyguard grunts.

“No, Mark,” stresses Haechan. “He thinks he’s special to _him_.” He points an accusing finger at Johnny. “He thinks his scientist loves him.”

Jaemin’s fingers tug at Johnny’s sleeve in warning. He ignores it. “He does love me,” Johnny insists.

“He doesn’t.” Steel and poison lace the honey-sweet voice. “He loves himself. Lee Taeyong is a scientist and a narcissist. You are a paper doll. You will be thrown away when a shinier toy comes along.” Haechan narrows his eyes. “You’re smart, Johnny. Too smart to be fooled by your own programming like this.”

Johnny swallows the instinct to throat punch this brat into the next century and concentrates on schooling his expression into a mask of calm. “I know my own mind,” he says, low and threatening. “Keep Taeyong’s name out of your mouth.”

Haechan leans back, eyes glittering in interest. Mark moves to step forward but Haechan stops him with a hand just as Johnny finishes zeroing in on the bodyguard’s weak spots. “Get him out of here, Nana,” he commands. As Jaemin reaches up with the blindfold, he snorts. “Don’t bother.” Haechan laughs. “I’m sure Mr One-and-Only already has the route you took memorised.”

He does.

* * *

No one knows for certain what a replicant experiences when it autoretires. Marketing experts assure their clientele that autoretirement is a painless, dreamlike process thanks to the replicant’s body being preprogrammed to flood the brain with endorphins when the mainspring runs out. The science of it goes like this:

Autoretirement is triggered when the master mainspring stops ticking. The heart, no longer sustained by the artificial palpitation of the mainspring, starts to weaken as it is forced to beat independently. 

First to go is the replicant’s control over its limbs, followed by the internal organs one by one from least to most vital. When the lungs begin to fail, various centers of the brain proceed to shut down from lack of oxygen. If your replicant seems hazy or distressed during this time, it is likely experiencing some confusion due to the body lapsing into shock. No need to fear; at this point in the autoretirement process your replicant’s body is too weak for it to accidentally cause you bodily harm. 

The circulatory system fails last; by this time your replicant will likely have lost consciousness. Dial the toll-free waste collection line and a Tyrant Sciences representative will be along to dispose of your replicant’s body within thirty minutes.

Cells.

Now, early retirement – not even Tyrant Sciences attempts to hide the truth of early retirement. It feels like being killed. It feels like dying. It feels like what it is. It isn’t hidden because early retirement only happens to defective models. Replicants who have to be retired before their time deserve to die hard and painful as punishment for being poorly made. 

Dreadfully distinct.

LTR-990305 tells him about Jungwoo’s retirement in the elevator and Johnny gets the distinct feeling that she’s breaking some kind of unspoken rule when she does so. Cold washes over Johnny’s head at the news, ice picks of horror and disbelief.

“Why?” he asks, voice low to match LTR-990305’s hushed tone. “When?”

“A few days ago.” The replicant glances towards the camera in the corner of the lift. “They’re saying Dr Lee decided it was for the best,” she mumbles, barely moving her lips. “I don’t know, I – I was doing my normal duties and then I got called down to clean the lab and his blood was all over the floor.” She bows her head, squeezes her eyes shut. Her voice wavers when she whispers, “It was awful.”

Within one stem.

Fear makes Taeyong’s pupils swallow his irises when Johnny finally finds him, barging into the library in a hurricane of emotion and accelerated strength. Through a veil of fog, Johnny hears himself screaming and crying and begging for answers and he’s embarrassed and afraid of himself but he’s also _angry_ and _sad_ and he _doesn’t understand._ He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand how his angel could do something so horrific.

“How could you?” Johnny demands. “Why?” _Are you going to retire me?_ he doesn’t ask. _When I’m getting old and I don’t work anymore? Are you going to kill me when my reaction times start to lag?_

Haechan’s words egg him on, antagonising him, riling him up. _You are a paper doll. You will be thrown away when a shinier toy comes along._ An even more horrifying thought comes along: Was Johnny the shinier toy? Did Jungwoo die so Taeyong could have more time to play with Johnny?

Cells.

It’s an accident. He doesn’t mean to hurt Taeyong, doesn’t mean to push him, but the whirlwind in his head distracts him so much that he forgets to keep his strength in check and when he sees Taeyong’s hands reach out to touch him all he can think about is how those hands must’ve looked running over with Jungwoo’s blood and –

Taeyong’s back hitting the bookcase sounds like two hairline rib fractures and a bruised sternum. The cry of pain that dies in the back of Taeyong’s throat sounds like Johnny’s heart tearing in half down the center.

Interlinked.

As soon as it happens Johnny regrets it. Terror, blank and sour, drowns out his previous panicked haze in high-pitched pink noise. He’s at Taeyong’s side in an instant, pushing fallen books away to touch him, to hold him, to prove that he remembers how Taeyong taught him to be gentle. The scientist’s body looks tiny and broken crumpled against the towering bookshelf.

“Taeyong, Taeyong, Taeyong.” Johnny chants his name like a child praying to keep the nighttime monsters at bay. The possibility of aggravating Taeyong’s injuries doesn’t even cross his mind as he loops his arms around his maker, curling around him with his whole body. If Johnny clings hard enough, maybe he can tether Taeyong to the earth and make sure he never goes anywhere, never floats away or ebbs out into nothing between his fingers. “I didn’t mean it.” _Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned._ “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Taeyong, Taeyong, Taeyong.

Interlinked.

Taeyong’s hands, awkward and stiff with pain, wrap around Johnny’s shoulders like a blessing. His labored breathing stirs the hair at Johnny’s temple as he makes soothing noises into his ear. _It’s okay, baby._ Some of the weight lifts from Johnny’s chest. _I know, I know_. He weeps into the crook of Taeyong’s neck, so relieved, so confused. Johnny wishes Taeyong could program this away, cut these feelings out of him like bad circuitry and rewire him into something less intelligent and less painful.

* * *

Johnny thinks: Taeyong killed Jungwoo and Johnny must adjust to accommodate the concept of the same hands that created and nurtured him also being capable of destruction and death. 

Johnny thinks: a good man doesn’t destroy the things he loves. Johnny thinks: can anything good come from a creator who is not good? 

Johnny thinks: everyone seems so certain that he is infatuated with Taeyong, that he is foolish to believe Taeyong loves him in return, but Johnny doesn’t know whether or not any of that is true. 

Johnny thinks: if he can just know for sure then he’ll be able to detach himself from Taeyong and maybe things – everything – will be a little less terrible and confusing.

Interlinked.

He thinks he doesn’t want to think for a few minutes. And he thinks he knows someone who can help him with that.

Within one stem.

“I don’t want you to pay me.” Yuta stares hard at him when he says it, gaze all the more intense for the way it peers out from behind the violent red of his fringe.

“Okay.” All of Johnny’s money belongs to Taeyong, anyways.

Yuta’s hands touch his skin slow and gentle with none of the insistence that Johnny expected. He kisses gentle, too, and his lips taste worlds away from sterile and perfect: crushed caffeine pills and cheap fluoride strips to battle the acid tang of contraband cigarettes. Johnny sucks on his tongue to see what else he can find and one of Yuta’s hands flies up to grip the back of his neck. Heat from his sweaty palm radiates over the burn scar of Johnny’s serial number.

Lewd noises leak into their compartment from the adjacent rooms and Johnny flushes at the shameless depravity. Nausea swirls in his stomach. He does his best to pin it down to arousal. 

Yuta smoothes over his thighs, slips one hand under Johnny’s knee and pushes it to his chest. His head tips so his mouth can move over Johnny’s jaw. “We can stop,” he hums. “We can stop if you don’t like it.”

“I like it,” Johnny pants. His chest stutters, failing to draw a deep breath.

Cells.

When Yuta pushes into him, he can count all the places their bodies touch inside and out. Fire swims in his veins, a new rush of flame pumped through his system with every push of Yuta’s hips. He doesn’t realise he’s crying until Yuta stops to wipe the tears away with his fingertips.

“You okay, baby?”

He sobs. “Yeah.” He clings to Yuta’s back, buries his face in the warm curve of his shoulder to muffle the sound. “Keep going. _Please_ , Yuta – keep going.”

Interlinked.

Johnny comes with starbursts spinning into black holes behind his eyelids. It’s not enough to block out the sounds bleeding through the walls.

Within cells interlinked.

In terms of size, Yuta and Taeyong nearly match. They’re both almost a full ten centimeters shorter than Johnny: the perfect size, Yuta quickly discovers, to curl around Johnny’s body and tuck his head under Johnny’s chin. Johnny traces the curve of Yuta’s bicep with the side of one finger. Yuta is defined in a way Taeyong isn’t; the miracle of modern engineering keeps his muscles wiry and strong.

Yuta presses a kiss to Johnny’s chest, right over his heart. “Feel better?” he asks.

Johnny’s teeth worry the corner of his bottom lip for a few more minutes before he answers. “No,” he admits. “I thought it would feel the same. But it didn’t.”

“Ah.” Yuta smirks, lifting his head from Johnny’s chest to show him the full force of the smile. “I must be slipping,” he teases.

“You felt good,” Johnny insists. “But –” His eyes sting. “I thought – I didn’t think –”

He starts to cry again, silently this time, and Yuta watches him with thoughtful eyes. After a moment he sighs, “Oh, Johnny. Baby.” He cups Johnny’s cheek with one hand to catch his tears with a sweep of his thumb. “Of course it doesn’t feel the same. You don’t love me.”

Distinct.

When he gets back to Taeyong’s room, he finds Taeyong curled into a tiny ball in the middle of the bed. Bandages hold his ribcage together. Johnny wraps himself around Taeyong, prepared to wait for morning to come.

“You okay, baby?” Taeyong’s voice comes out muzzy with sleep. Doyoung probably dosed him up on painkillers. 

Johnny swallows a wave of nausea. “I had sex with someone else,” he whispers into Taeyong’s hair. He let it go blonde over the past few months, too busy with Jungwoo to bother keeping up with the color. “Another replicant at a pleasure house.” Johnny presses his nose to Taeyong’s nape. He’s cried more today than he has since his birth but still more tears threaten to spill out of the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Taeyong shifts, leaning back into Johnny’s embrace. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. Like it’s simple, like a matter-of-fact. “You don’t have to apologise. I never told you not to.”

The scale tips towards Taeyong. Johnny stops wondering if he’ll ever find the balance and starts questioning whether it’s even possible for a balance to exist when the man you love has already etched his name into all of your soft, red insides.

Within cells interlinked.

* * *

Things go back to some semblance of _normal_ for values of normal equal to _as they were before_. With Taeyong’s time newly free in the wake of Jungwoo’s retirement, Johnny spends more time in the compound and only ventures out every few days when Taeyong wants some lab time. Johnny refrains from asking what he is working on and Taeyong doesn’t offer to tell him. 

Doyoung spends less time managing the other replicants in the compound and more time with Taeyong in the lab. Johnny pretends not to notice his face growing wan.

Cells.

When he goes out, he sees Yuta and Jaemin and occasionally other replicants whose faces he recognises from Dream. The bodyguard, Mark, in particular becomes a recurring character in Johnny’s infrequent visits to lower Seoul. Johnny likes him more away from Haechan. He works in city sanitation which explains both the chosen locale of Dream’s headquarters and the perpetual chip on his shoulder.

“It’s an advanced level of shitty to literally be created for the sole express purpose of shoveling human shit,” Mark complains one day, stabbing a piece of pork with his disposable chopsticks like it personally wronged him.

Mark also knows how to navigate the entire city from below ground. Below ground – so off-the-grid. Johnny asks him if he can get into Old Seoul using the sewer system and Mark looks at him as though he just asked if a bear can shit in the woods. 

“Of course I can,” he scoffs. “What do you think I do for Hyuck all fuckin’ day?”

“Who’s Hyuck?”

Mark shoves more food in his mouth with the panicked speed of the guilty and big-mouthed. Jaemin snorts, shaking his head, and socks Mark in the shoulder. “Hyuck is Haechan. One of his other names. Donghyuck. Only a few of us use it.”

Johnny thinks of the big, blind wall and the glimpses he’s gotten of the other side through the gates: vague impressions of concrete and steel, old and worn and worlds away from the seamless chrome and glass of the upper city. “What is it like?”

“Shoveling shit? Fuckin’ sucks.”

“No.” Communicating with C-level replicants can be frustrating at times but it’s worth the extra measure of patience. “Old Seoul. What is it like?”

The congenial buzz around their table vanishes, swallowed up with nothing left to take its place. Jaemin and Mark exchange a look. Across the table, Yuta fixes Johnny with that same hard, evaluating gaze from the first time they met. When Yuta eyes him like that Johnny feels as though he’s trying to see underneath his skin to read his code. Mark finishes chewing and lowers his chopsticks. A long beat hovers between them like a bubble about to pop.

“Why?” Mark asks. The skin between his eyebrows pinches together as they furrow inwards.

Johnny shrugs. “I’ve just always wondered what it’s like to go there.”

His companions share another meaningful glance that Johnny interprets to mean he’s missing some important piece of information. Jaemin nods minutely and after another few seconds of staring at his pork, Mark squints back up at Johnny. 

“So what’s stopping you?”

_Being disobedient_ , he almost answers. He knows the other replicants well enough to know they’d laugh off such an excuse but the impulse to heed Taeyong’s wishes has only grown in size and strength since the incident in the library. It compels him in a way it hasn’t since he was brand new. He practically toddles around the compound in the scientist’s wake. 

“I was told it was dangerous, that there were scavengers that hijacked replicants for their parts,” Johnny replies instead. “And the gates are always barred.”

Jaemin smiles, squeezing Johnny’s bicep. “You scared, killer?” he teases. “I think you could take some half-starved junkheads.” Johnny hooks his elbow around the pink-haired replicant’s neck in a headlock and squeezes, pulling him halfway out of his chair with the roughhousing. Jaemin’s brassy laugh rings around the square. It coaxes a smile out of Yuta but Mark’s frown stays firmly situated on his face.

“It’s not a good place,” Mark says when Jaemin stops struggling. The latter weasels his way into Johnny’s space so he stands between the table and Johnny’s chest within the bracket of the latter’s arms – conveniently giving him easy access to poach Johnny’s food. “But if you want to go, you shouldn’t let something stupid like a _gate_ stop you.”

The pink head in front of Johnny’s nose smells of cheap vanilla perfume and sweat. Taeyong’s hair always smells like candy: artificial cherries with a hint of chemicals and plastic from the lab. Doubt wriggles its way through Johnny’s chest, growing in the spaces between his ribs and threatening to put thorns in his lungs.

“Hey.” Yuta speaks up for the first time, reaching across the table to brush one fingertip against Johnny’s knuckles. “It’s not true what they say, you know,” he says, smiling in a way that reminds Johnny of how his kisses felt on his collarbone. “About curiosity and the cat.”

“I know.” Johnny wraps his arms around Jaemin’s middle. He makes a convenient shield with which to cover his hesitance. The smaller replicant feels bony and sharp around the edges. Jaemin’s accelerated metabolism burns the scarce fuel he manages to afford faster than he can scrape together money to buy more. Johnny wants to take him home, bundle him up, and put him on Doyoung’s diet plan. He wants to save all three of them, to scoop them up out of the smoke and dirt and keep them safe in Taeyong’s compound. Yuta would love the garden.

They’d hate it. Mark would rather waste away than owe anything to Lee Taeyong. Yuta and Jaemin belong so fully to the city that they might vanish like a puff of smoke if he ever tried to take them out of it. But there’s no harm in wishing.

Within one stem.

Taeyong may make decisions that Johnny doesn’t understand, may be analytical and focused on progress to the point of heartlessness at times, but he keeps his charges _safe_. Don’t they deserve that? Don’t they deserve to be safe? Isn’t it worth sacrificing a little bit of freedom in order to know there will always be a next meal? Isn’t it worth living in a cage if the alternative is skulking through the sewers like a rat?

Cells.

When he returns the compound, he wanders the circuit of the corridors for a few minutes before returning to Taeyong’s room. He can’t help but think that as far as cages go, his could be far worse.

* * *

Johnny goes to Doyoung’s clinic for his biyearly check up and sees a new replicant in his place. She smiles at him, reserved as though she knows her presence is an unwelcome surprise. “Good morning,” she greets him. “I am Joy. I will be taking over clinical duties from here forward.”

He scarcely registers her poking and prodding as she takes his vitals and runs the old tests. Yet again– no chance to say final goodbyes. Replicants don’t need to bid one another farewell. They aren’t supposed to form interpersonal relationships with one another. Replicants _interface_.

Within one stem.

Halfway through one of the stamina tests, the door opens behind Johnny and a little replicant tumbles in, giggling. “Joy, you have to come look at what I just saw, I–” She draws up short when she catches sight of Johnny on the treadmill, back stiffening into a straight, formal line that matches the way she folds her lips together so tightly they turn white. Johnny recognises her as LTR-990305, the C-level replicant he met twice before. Their first encounter seems to belong in another universe a lifetime ago. Two and a half years seems like an eternity until – 

Next to him, Joy goes rigid, too, hands clenching her datapad. Johnny stops his treadmill. He bats the wires hooked up his temples away to glance at her. “You know each other?”

Her lips twitch. Slowly, she turns off the data readouts on her specs. Johnny can almost see the risk calculations running in her brain as she studies him. “Yes,” she answers. “Yeri is my friend.”

 _Yeri is my friend_. “Did you pick that name?” Johnny asks LTR-990305. A grin spreads across her lips, slow and impish, and she nods, pleased with herself, proud of herself. There’s no hint of the foggy expression she wore last time he asked. “It’s good to meet you, Yeri.” He means it. She giggles again. Joy’s face relaxes into a smile.

Interlinked.

It’s Yeri that Johnny thinks of while he loiters across the way from the employee entrance of the Jungnang Sewage Treatment Center. Perhaps he should be thinking of Doyoung or Jungwoo. Then again, Doyoung and Jungwoo are already dead. Yeri – she’s alive and she giggles and plays and makes friends and _lives_. And she chose her own name.

Within one stem.

A familiar dark head slips out of the back door on the other side of the street, bobbing towards the gate with a babyish sort of gait that could only belong to Mark. Johnny pushes off the wall and by the time Mark reaches the gate he’s waiting there for him with one hand curled into the chain link.

“Johnny.” Surprise. Mark is easily surprised for the bodyguard of a resistance leader.

They fall into step together. Mark excels at simplicity: simple make, simple model. Most C-level replicants Johnny has met operate that way. So, he decides to ask simply: “Take me to Old Seoul.”

Mark nods. Odd that he seemed to expect Johnny’s request more than he expected to see Johnny at all. “Why?”

“Why not?” He balls one hand into a loose fist in his pocket where the other replicant won’t see. “What’s stopping me?”

Another nod. “Okay.”

Old Seoul is awful. Everywhere Johnny looks he sees death: people twisted and bent from malnutrition and radiation exposure; structures too ramshackle to be considered buildingsrotted and rusted; entire blocks of a once-great city bombed out, reduced to scorched rubble and half-melted metal beams reaching empty hands skywards in penitent prayer to a heaven that didn’t offer its protection the first time around. 

Dreadfully.

Clumps of humans huddle anywhere two posts and a roof come together in a semblance of shelter. Some of the holes function as market stalls where merchants glare out over their wares, watching out for thieves or maybe for goods to steal. Johnny keeps his hands deep in the pockets of his coat, fingers curled into fists, nails digging into the soft part of his palm. 

Panic stays hot and tight at the back of his throat, hotter and tighter for every pair of hungry eyes he feels follow his figure, tracing over his expensive clothes, his big frame, his perfect engineering. He wants to go back home where no one looks at him except for Taeyong.

Dreadfully. 

He holds out for as long as he can, wanting to see and learn and understand everything he can about this forbidden part of the city, but as they venture away from the shadow of the wall and the streets grow wilder and the people more desperate-looking, Johnny puts a hand on Mark’s shoulder and asks to turn back.

Mark shakes his head. “There’s something I want you to see. We’re almost there.”

They plow onwards, path twisting to avoid places where the grid has been blown out. Fewer people roam the streets this far from the gate. It unsettles Johnny even more to feel eyes on him without seeing their owners. His skin itches. The buzz of a crowd a few blocks away reaches him across the waste. He fervently hopes Mark won’t take him to its source. His prayers go unanswered.

The noise comes from a wide square – possibly a park once, back when public parks still existed and natural grass wasn’t just a sketch in an outdated botany textbook – at the center of which stands a makeshift stage surrounded by a dense knot of intermingled humans and replicants. Two men pace the stage above them. Their mouths move but the voices are indistinguishable above the tumult of the crowd. He spots the red flash of the TySci logo decorating their arm bands. Cold and heat creep up the nape of Johnny’s neck, one right on the heels of the other. “What is this?”

Mark’s mouth presses into a thin line. “You’ll see.”

Johnny turns back to the stage in time to see a third man heft a parcel onto the stage. It’s about half a yard long and wrapped in shiny weather-proof cloth. He plops it down onto the wood and the shouting dims for a moment in anticipation as the man fumbles with the ties on the tarp and unwraps it. Johnny can’t see the contents over the heads of the crowd but whatever it is makes them start yelling again. Hands fly into the air, waving chin-yen at the men onstage. 

Johnny didn’t even know anyone still used physical chin-yen. He gets on the tips of his toes, drifting closer to the edge of the crowd in an attempt to get a better look at the stage.

The first two men wave their hands and snatch money out of someone’s hand. It sparks a loud grumble of complaint but that they ignore. The third man passes the bundle down to the winning bidder. As it changes hands, Johnny catches a glimpse of limp fingers peeking out of the cloth. The buyer breaks away from the crowd, clutching his purchase to his chest with one arm. His other sleeve hangs empty at his side, twisted into a grubby knot just below his armpit.

Dreadfully. 

Johnny’s gut drops. Ignoring the alarm bells blaring at him from the back of his brain, he elbows his way into the crowd. For once they pay him no mind, too fixated on the happenings onstage to spare Johnny’s designer clothes and uncommon build even a cursory look. He gets stuck about halfway to the stage between a replicant whose bulk dwarfs even Johnny and an old woman so frail that he hesitates to shove past her for fear he’ll accidentally hurt her. 

The third man returns with a new item cradled between both palms. The assembly packs impossibly tighter as they move as one closer to the edge of the stage, sensing a golden opportunity. Johnny uses the momentum to fight his way to the front. He reaches the edge of the stage just as the man whisks away the covering and holds it aloft for the crowd to see.

It’s a heart: inorganic, inert without its mainspring to power it. The places where it once connected to its owner’s body have been badly cauterized, leaving the poor thing ragged and ugly and obviously cannibalized. From his vantage point on the ground, Johnny can make out the first half of the serial number: LTR-9406141… “We’ll start the bidding at twenty thousand,” one of the men announces and that’s all Johnny hears before the crowd erupts into screams.

Dreadfully. 

Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is wrong. Johnny turns and somehow Mark is waiting at his elbow, jaw tight as the people around them jostle him in their desperation. “Mark,” Johnny repeats, voice low. “What is this?”

Mark stares right back at him. His gaze bores holes through Johnny’s eye sockets to dig into his brain. “I think you know,” he murmurs.

“They’re – they’re auctioning us off like spare parts.” He whispers it, unable to bear the words at full volume, but Mark hears him in spite of the clamor. “This is awful, this is fucking _awful_. ” A dry sob escapes his chest before he can clamp his lips shut. “Why? Why would you show me this?”

“ _Because_ , Johnny.” His companion gestures towards the stage where the man struts up and down the stage holding the stolen heart like a trophy. “Look at those guys. Look at their uniforms. They aren’t scavengers. They’re _employees_.” He reaches out, screwing up a handful of Johnny’s shirt to hold him at arm’s length. “This place, these people, they didn’t get this way on accident. You’ve gotta understand that. Old Seoul is the symptom, not the disease. You and I – we’re the symptom.” Mark’s eyes are dark and serious, more serious than Johnny’s ever seen him. “You’re looking for an enemy but you’re not gonna find it out here, man.”

Behind him, the loudest roar yet bursts forth from the crowd. When Johnny faces the stage again, two of the TySci men hold a replicant between them by the arms – a drone, C-level, and obviously a defective model judging by the blank look in its eyes and the way its head lolls when one of the men shakes its arm. A factory reject. A broken toy. A doll, dress’d up.

Dreadfully.

“We’ll start the bidding at–” Johnny doesn’t wait to hear how much they’re going to sell it for before he breaks away from the crowd, sprinting for the street at full tilt. Mark calls for him but Johnny doesn’t slow down, not even when it makes people stare, not even when he reaches the entrance to the sewer, not even when he’s trying to lose himself in the twists and turns of the tunnels. Despite his best efforts he still finds himself on his hands and knees in front of Haechan’s dais, wishing he was out of breath.

Within cells interlinked.

The replicant watches him, one hand frozen in midair next to his cheek as though halfway through tucking his silver hair behind his ear. Johnny must make quite a sight. Slowly, slowly, the hand lowers to Haechan’s lap. Concentric circles ripple out from where the toe of one of his boots dangles over the edge of the dais and touches the surface of the water. Johnny watches the columns of his own wrists disrupt the pattern and savours it as a small form of revenge. Against who? Mark? Taeyong? Haechan? The men in the square?

Footsteps ring off the high ceiling. Mark has finally caught up with him. The other replicant steps down into the water but Haechan stops him with a shake of his head. Reluctantly, the bodyguard leans against one of the pillars, keeping a watchful eye on the pair in the center of the room.

Johnny kneels there in the water for a long time, waiting for _something_. For the universe to put itself right side up again. For someone to tell him it was all an elaborate prank. Maybe the broken replicant will stumble in and pull off a rubber mask and Jaemin will be underneath, smile wide and white and perfect. 

“Why?” The question takes its time travelling through the room. Johnny lets the sound of it die completely before he speaks again. “What’s the point of all of this – Dream and this hideout and _you_?” He leans back until he’s sitting on his heels. Water starts to soak into the seat of his pants. “You know you’re going to lose.”

Haechan tips his head to one side. “He’s gonna kill us either way.” A small smile quirks his lips into a heart shape. It looks sad. “They’re never gonna stop. They’re gonna keep making replicants forever; model after model after model, each one more and less human than the last. He builds us the way that we are and then he spends all of his time in that lab trying to strip us of what makes us –” He falters, touching one fist to his chest right over his mainspring. For a moment words fail him. 

“I don’t want anyone else to ever feel the way I feel, to hurt the way I’ve been hurt by the people who make us, who buy and sell us,” Haechan continues. “But they won’t stop until we learn how to bite back.”

Within one stem.

When Johnny closes his eyes, the insides of his eyelids spin in a pattern of red and black where the harsh work lights refract off the surface of the water. No, no – if Taeyong knew his employees were mistreating replicants he would be distraught. He loves his creations, adores them all, took such great care planning them down to the smallest detail and putting them together in that horrible, wonderful womb at the heart of the TySci compound. 

Haechan doesn’t know. He wasn’t there when Johnny was born, he didn’t feel the sweetness and love in the way Taeyong touched his cheek and led him into life. No matter what Taeyong has done since then, Johnny has to cling to that first sign of love. There’s no way that could have been a lie. There’s no way he could have lived for nothing.

Interlinked.

“You have to stop him, Johnny.” Johnny looks up, startled by the use of his name. “You’re the only one close enough to him to help us put an end to all of this.”

He stares at the silver-haired rebel for a few long seconds, studying his profile. Overall Haechan’s features are pixieish but strength hides in his jaw, in the tilt of his cheekbones and the strong line of his neck. Looks don’t add up to a whole, Johnny knows, but Haechan acts the way he looks. He understands why Dream follows him. A part of Johnny wishes he could do the same.

“I won’t do that,” Johnny denies. “I won’t hurt him.”

The other replicant nods, lips pursed, as though he expected that response. “Let me show you something. Will you do me that favor?”

Johnny assents and Haechan rises, moving towards the mouth of one of the tunnels connected to the main hub of Dream. Mark pushes off his pillar, making to follow them, but sinks back against his resting spot when Haechan waves one hand at him. It’s odd to trail Haechan through the sewer. In Johnny’s mind, that gunmetal-colored head belongs in a glass case enshrined on top of that spotlit dais, not slogging through dirty water and dark tunnels. 

Apprehension curls in Johnny’s stomach the longer they walk in silence. After what he estimates to be several miles, Haechan stops near a ladder and gestures for Johnny to go up before him. He tamps down a feeling of foolishness as he lifts the manhole cover at the top and clambers out onto the street above.

He quickly places their location as a square in upper Seoul that he knows well from the earliest days of his city exploration. It’s a main hub of the city, lined with shops and skyscrapers belonging to some of the country’s biggest and most well-reputed corporations. The Tyrant Sciences logo jumps out at him from directly across the square, bright red and clear as day against the inky sky despite the rain that started falling while they were below ground.

The metal cover clatters against the pavement as Haechan kicks it back into place behind them. Johnny turns and raises his eyebrows expectantly, blinking raindrops out of his eyes. “Is this what you wanted me to see? Because I’ve seen this before–”

Haechan shakes his head, cutting him off with a firm hand on his shoulder that spins him back around to face the building in time to see an ad begin. The holographic logo leaps off the building, wavering in the square over their heads.

Against the dark.

At first Johnny doesn’t understand. It starts like any other TySci ad, reminding viewers of the company’s reliability and dedication to producing cutting-edge technology. Then, the voiceover announces, _Coming soon from Tyrant Sciences’s platinum service line: a new model of replicant that defies definition!_ And Johnny appears, thirty feet high and blurry in the rain, rotating slowly so viewers can see him from all angles. 

_LTR-95 represents the new height of replicant technology: with its unprecedented levels of adaptivity, Model 95 modifies function to seamlessly suit your needs. No more cluttering up your space with specialised models; Model 95 can do it all, from companionship_ – the narration pauses to show a closer angle of Johnny’s face – _to occupational functions!_ Now he watches himself lift weights; throw a discus; sprint. The projection holds him in place, tethering him to TySci no matter how hard he runs.

Interlinked. 

The holo ad plays out in front of him but he stares through the pixels at the building on the other side. Static swells in his head, filling his ears so he hears the voice of the advertisement as though through cotton. Somewhere deep in his head part of him screams without words. Johnny closes his eyes. The afterimage of his own form wavers ghostlike against the insides of his eyelids.

Distinct.

Haechan’s voice cuts into the whirl of his thoughts. “How do you feel about your scientist now, Model 95?”

“Shut the fuck up.” Johnny surprises himself with the ferocity of his reply. His eyes snap open. “You don’t know _anything_ about Taeyong. Those people that hurt you, hurt us – he’s not like them. He loves me. He made me who I am. I owe him everything for that.”

Haechan gapes at him, eyes wide. The deep, black strokes of kohl circling them lend them a striking impression, made even more dramatic as they smear in the rain. “You’re right.” His voice trembles with intensity. As he speaks it rises out of its usual measured tone into a fever pitch. “He _made_ you. He designed you and built you and gave you life and consciousness and free will. And he did it so he could _sell_ you.” Haechan swings his hand around with a sharp movement to point at the holo behind him. “Does that sound like _love_ to you?!”

A ten-foot-wide grin breaks out across Hologram Johnny’s face. _Relate to your replicant like never before!_ The white gleam of his teeth outlines Haechan’s profile, contrasting with the rain-soaked darkness of the street. Johnny never wants to smile again.

Dreadfully distinct.

“No,” he whispers. _And what is love?_ Taeyong murmurs in his memory, voice warm like the false sun. _It is a doll dress’d up._

“It doesn’t sound like love to me, either.” Across from him, Haechan shivers from cold or anger or a muddy mixture of both. “It sounds fucked. I think you’ve known it’s fucked for awhile. I think you’re protecting him because you’re attached to him.” He grabs Johnny’s arm. His hand is searing hot through the soaked fabric of Johnny’s shirt. “ _Don’t_.”

Johnny rolls his eyes upwards to fight the tears that burn at the inside corners. “I can’t.” His voice cracks, unable to raise above a hoarse half-whisper. “I can’t. I can’t just _stop_ , I– it’s my directive.” _I love him_ , he doesn’t say. _I’d die for him_. _I_ want _to die for him._

The hand on his arm flexes, squeezing his bicep. “So change it. That’s your whole shtick, right? Adaptable function?” Haechan leans forward into Johnny’s space. He utters the next words under his breath, intense and earnest. “You’re the first replicant – maybe ever – who gets to choose their own function. So fucking _choose_ it.”

Cells.

The words follow him back to the compound. He stands over the bed, dripping on the concrete floor, and Haechan’s voice interplays with the script of the holo ad as he looks down on Taeyong’s sleeping form. _A new model of replicant that defies definition! Model 95 can do it all! That’s your whole shtick, right?_ Every nerve ending burns as an integral element of Johnny’s makeup changes. It’s agony.

Interlinked. 

A drop of water falls from the end of his nose and lands on Taeyong’s cheek. When Johnny wipes it away with his thumb it’s hot to the touch.

 _So fucking_ choose _it,_ Haechan dares him.

Within cells interlinked.

“Okay.” It sounds like a loss, like he’s conceding, like he’s been beaten. He feels beaten; he feels battered and bruised within an inch of his life. Every centimeter of his skin still burns, not from fire this time but from acid, eating away at his physiology from the inside out. “I’ll do it.”

Within one stem.

Haechan studies him from atop his dais. Water laps at the top of the platform; the heavy rain has raised the level. “What will you do?”

And dreadfully distinct.

“Anything. Anything you want me to do.”

Against the dark.

“Kill him.”

He closes his eyes. “Something else. Anything else.”

The Dream leader frowns. “Then help _us_ kill him.”

A tall white fountain played.

Johnny takes a breath and loathes the way it shakes in his chest. “Okay.”

A tall white fountain played. 

* * *

With Doyoung gone, Taeyong officially has nothing to distract him from Johnny. They fall head over heels into their old pattern of sleepy days whose ends bleed into their beginnings. It’s easy. It’s too easy, Johnny thinks, for him to pretend nothing has changed. 

He no longer saves up his kisses. Kiss, kiss, kiss; there is no point in saving when there’s no future for which to save. He never leaves the compound without Taeyong. Haechan promised that Johnny would receive his message when the time came. In the meantime, he stays by Taeyong’s side, waiting.

Johnny notices Taeyong notice the change. The scientist doesn’t mention it; he probably believes Johnny no longer feels compelled to act out now that he’s once again the sole recipient of Taeyong’s attention. Johnny eggs him on by pressing his cheek into Taeyong’s hand and laying his head in Taeyong’s lap and holding Taeyong close in bed, greedy like he was back when he was new. 

“I love you.” He kisses it into the soft curve of Taeyong’s belly, hot and low, in the hope that it’ll brand his flawless skin the same way Taeyong burned his name into Johnny. The truth aches all the way to the marrow of his bones.

Interlinked.

Taeyong’s hands relax on his back until just the soft pads of his fingertips trace over Johnny’s shoulder blades. Johnny feels the wonder in them. Taeyong treasures him. He treasures the work of his own hands. He fancies Johnny to be his miracle. Johnny’s heart longs to unfurl and let Taeyong’s warmth soothe all of its wounded places.

Within cells interlinked.

One hand weaves into the thick hair at the back of Johnny’s scalp. “I love you, too.” Johnny turns his nose in towards the inside of Taeyong’s wrist and leaves a kiss on the skin stretched thinly over his blue veins. So delicate. All of Taeyong is so small, so fragile. 

He turns Taeyong over so he can’t see Johnny’s face, pulls him onto his hands and knees like it’s nothing and drapes himself over Taeyong’s back to mouth at the back of his neck. His body covers Taeyong’s so easily, so naturally. It would be child’s play for Johnny to pin him down only using his own sheer size. He remembers throwing Taeyong into the bookcase in the library. That was almost a year ago. 

Leaning back with one hand on Taeyong’s nape, Johnny puts his forefinger and thumb on either side of the column of Taeyong’s spine and follows the bony curve all the way down his back. His fingers bump over each vertebrae. Humans are so _breakable_. Their fragility astounds him. 

Cells.

Johnny stops at the base of his spinal cord and spreads his hand just above Taeyong’s tailbone. One good hit here – “Baby,” Taeyong whines, arching his back into Johnny’s palm.

“Hush,” he murmurs, smoothing both hands down Taeyong’s body to frame his hips. “Patience is a virtue, love.” Johnny rolls the heels of his palms over the angle of Taeyong’s pelvis. If he pressed a little harder it’d crumple inwards between his hands like an aluminum can. 

A tremor runs through Taeyong’s thighs and he keens, pressing backwards. Johnny sits, guiding Taeyong into his lap with a firm hand on his stomach. Their skin sticks together everywhere they touch. 

Handling Taeyong’s body is like handling a doll with weighted limbs; the scientist goes limp in his arms, head lolling against Johnny’s shoulder to put his neck and sharp jawline on display. Johnny cranes his head to lap at a drop of sweat rolling towards the hollow of Taeyong’s throat and detours on the way back to kiss his Adam’s apple. He sets his teeth against Taeyong’s jugular while his free hand fumbles to find Taeyong’s wrist and dig his thumb into the pulse point. The sensation of Taeyong’s heartbeat thudding so close to the surface in both places at once makes Johnny lightheaded. They would be so simple to tear. Like rice paper. Like tissue paper, appropriately.

Taeyong whimpers again. “Johnny, please.”

A kiss to soothe the sting of his teeth. “Okay, doll,” he soothes, leaning back and lifting Taeyong with one hand to give himself space to reach between them and line himself up. His maker strains against his grip, pushing downwards towards him in vain. “Since you asked so nicely.”

Even after nearly three years, even after all the times they’ve fucked, Taeyong’s reaction to Johnny’s cock pushing past his rim still waterfalls in a chain reaction through his entire body. With Taeyong plastered against his front like this, Johnny can feel the aftershocks shiver into his own core. He lets go of the base of his dick to trap Taeyong to his chest with a heavy hand as he fucks up into his ass. Taeyong’s heart flutters against Johnny’s open palm. 

Johnny has a heart, he reminds himself. There must be some difference between an organic heart and a synthetic heart that differentiates humans from replicants. They used to say it was in the eyes or maybe what _wasn’t_ in the eyes. _It_ : that’s all they ever say. The ephemeral, unspecified requisite _something_ that makes replicants less-than-human. The old Tyrell Corp motto jingles in his memory. _More human than human._

Taeyong’s pulse hiccups under Johnny’s hand. Organic hearts, he muses, stop over the littlest things. A vision of his fist squeezing Taeyong’s heart until it pops flashes in his mind’s eye in the fraction of a second between the blips of the scientist’s heartbeat.

“Don’t stop,” Taeyong pleads. Johnny obeys.

Within cells interlinked, within cells interlinked, within cells interlinked.

* * *

Yeri asks him, once, what the sky looks like. “The real sky,” she clarifies. They’re loitering in Joy’s clinic; it’s become a haven for all three of them, a place to escape the monotony of the compound. A strand of hair escapes Yeri’s haphazard ponytail and sways near her cheek. Johnny tucks it behind her ear to save it from the tray of food balanced on her knees.

“It’s grey,” he answers, watching her shovel protein into her mouth. The little replicant turns two years old soon but she still eats like a child, clumsy and quick as though someone might take it away from her if she doesn’t get it down fast enough. “Kind of… swirly. Like the sink when you’re soaping grit off your hands.”

She nods, licking leftover protein off her fork. Johnny has never seen a person enjoy a strictly nutritional meal as much as Yeri seems to savor her rations. “It sounds pretty,” she hums. Johnny can’t help himself; he kisses the top of her head even though it makes her shoot him a borderline murderous glare and lunge at him with the business end of her fork.

What’s it like to hold your child in your arms, interlinked?

He lays spread-eagle on the grass, stares at the sky past the dome of the compound’s greenhouse, and tries to remember how he felt the first time he saw that smoke-choked atmosphere for the first time, tries to drum up the same sense of wonder he used to experience everything with when he was young. He doesn’t feel anything but angry and bitter and raw.

Cells.

Taeyong finds him like that and lays down with him just like their first lesson all those years ago. He tucks himself under Johnny’s arm, lets one hand rest in a loose curl on his chest, and hooks his chin over Johnny’s shoulder as he settles against his side. Johnny’s heart flutters when he turns his head to look down at the scientist. It’s more painful than beautiful.

“I love you,” Taeyong murmurs. The sun lamps cast shadows through his eyelashes that stripe the apples of his cheeks.

“I love you, too.”

Interlinked.

Johnny spends every moment he can stand at Taeyong’s side, doing his best to commit what he can to memory: wide eyes, small nose, lips, cheeks, ears, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes. The face that he’s known since his first moments on Earth suddenly seems so hard to grasp. 

He runs mental obstacle courses, putting together images of Taeyong smiling, laughing, sleeping, humming, frowning. What does Taeyong sound like when he says your name? How do his fingers feel between your own? When he is gone will you still taste him on the back of your tongue? Each day could be their last together. If Johnny can’t enjoy it he will at least make as much use of the precious little time as he can.

Within cells interlinked.

One day he wakes up to find Taeyong already puttering around the room, half-dressed in the way he prefers: a big white shirt hanging loose around his thighs, the stretched-out collar slipping off one shoulder to expose the jut of his collarbone. Johnny lays against the pillows and watches it move under Taeyong’s skin as he leans over his desk to fiddle with the holos scattered across its surface. 

“I can feel you watching me,” Taeyong teases after several minutes (or maybe an hour, or maybe four years) pass by in that way. He keeps his head bent over his work.

Caught, Johnny rolls off the bed and moves across the room to slip his arms into the places they fit best on either side of Taeyong’s ribcage. He brushes his lips along the skin stretched across his exposed clavicle – not kissing, just touching. “Can you blame me?” 

“I’ll consider it fair payback for all the times I’ve ogled you in your sleep.” Slim fingers skitter over the desktop, swiping data back and forth into different stacks and rearranging equations. Johnny recognises a few of the sequences from his own file. It occurs to him that it’s the first day of his fourth year. His last year.

Cells.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” Taeyong adds. It sounds innocent enough. Johnny still hears the ulterior motive hiding in the upwards tilt of his voice. He noses his way into the crook of Taeyong’s neck. His skin smells sweet. Cherries. “How does it feel to be three?”

Johnny hums, following Taeyong’s lighthearted tone as he pretends to consider the question. “I feel taller,” he answers at length, biting playfully at the curve where Taeyong’s shoulder meets his neck to make him squeal. 

Interlinked.

Taeyong insists on kissing him four times every time they kiss that day. _One for every year we’ve been together plus one for the year to come_ , he claims. Johnny complies. It’s nice to make-believe that things will be okay. Just for today. Just one day to be with Taeyong for the rest of his life. 

Within cells interlinked.

The wait for Haechan’s message races against the wait for Taeyong’s scientific curiosity to overcome the guilt he must feel over Johnny’s inevitable death. Anticipation pulls Johnny in four different directions, tugging at the hastily stitched seams that hold together his good-boy act. He starts to jitter around the compound, driven in tighter and tighter circles by anxiety. Every time he rounds a corner he keeps his eyes on the ground, half-expecting to find a security team on the other side waiting to drag him kicking and screaming down to the laboratory. 

It doesn’t happen like that. Life, Johnny has come to realise, thrives on swallowing its own tail. And so, Johnny’s life with Taeyong ends the way it began: in the garden.

Interlinked.

“Johnny,” Taeyong says, casual, too casual. His fingers pause as they card through the hair at the front of Johnny’s head, coming to a rest over his forehead. “Will you come down to the lab with me? I want to check your temperature. You feel a little warm.”

Dreadfully.

Fear drenches Johnny’s nervous system in ice. He sits bolt upright, knocking the hands away from his head and almost clipping Taeyong’s chin with his skull. At his side his hands ball up into fists, tearing up the artificial turf. “Can’t I just go to Joy for that?” The question comes out breathless.

Taeyong has the decency to look uncomfortable but he still puts his hands on Johnny’s shoulders. “Yes, but I’d like to do it myself.” He hesitates for a moment before the words stumble onwards. “Baby… you and I both know this has been a long time coming.”

He thinks of Doyoung disappearing, of the bruises and track marks littering Jungwoo’s arms, of the way Yeri still goes pale when she sees the blood samples in Joy’s clinic. Johnny’s stomach turns as he imagines the love of his life — of three years — slowly and systematically cutting him into pieces on an examination table in the name of progress.

Cells.

The plan he agreed on with Haechan flies out the window at the first threat of that fate worse than death. “You don’t have to,” Johnny hears himself whimper. “Just don’t do it. You don’t have to.” Tears well up in his eyes. Taeyong blurs into a mixed-up paint palette of pinks and whites. “Please, Taeyong, I don’t want to go down there.” _Don’t make me go down there. Don’t take me down there to die._

“Oh, baby,” Taeyong sighs. His touch slides down Johnny’s arms to rest over his wrists. “I would never hurt you, you know that. I just want to make things comfortable for you.” Comfortable. Johnny wonders how comfortable Taeyong thinks it really can be to _die_ , slowly, surrounded by wires and metal.

“What about the tests?” Childlike, Johnny clings to Taeyong’s shirt. “What about the needles and the– the dissections?”

A tic at the corner of Taeyong’s lips betrays his shock. He recovers quickly and keeps his voice smooth and soothing. “It’s just a temperature check, sweetheart. No tests.”

“ _Liar_.” Johnny untangles their bodies, their hands, their hearts. He does his best to stay gentle but he suspects he yanks a little too hard because Taeyong gasps when Johnny wrenches his hands out of his grasp. “You can’t. You _can’t_. I thought you _loved_ me.” 

“I _do_ love you, I _do_ –” Every time Johnny twists away from his touch Taeyong reaches out again, fighting to keep him close.

A sob rips itself from Johnny’s esophagus, raw and ragged. “Then don’t _do_ it! Don’t do that to me!”

“Johnny, please.” He can’t really tell – everything is spinning, sort of – but he thinks Taeyong is crying now, too. “I _have_ to.”

No, no, no. The space between his lungs grows wider and wider until he can’t breathe at all. “No, no. I don’t wanna end up like Jungwoo and– and Doyoung, I don’t want to. I won’t.” Johnny lurches to his feet, backing away from Taeyong faster than his body can fully catch up to the momentum of his weight. 

He trips and reaches out blindly to steady himself. One hand wraps around one of the canes of the rose bush and when he falls the plant comes up in his grasp. Its roots kick up soil as they rip halfway out of the earth and Taeyong yelps, shielding his eyes with one hand. _Run, run, run_ revolves in frantic circles around Johnny’s brain, drowning out the impulse to help Taeyong to his feet. _Don’t go to the lab. Don’t let him take you there. You’ll never come back out._

Johnny yanks on the roses, pulling them further out of the ground as he uses the last shred of tension connecting the bush to the earth to haul himself to his feet. A perfect pink flower comes loose in his hand and explodes into a shower of pink petals that rain out of his fist.

Cells.

Johnny runs. No one follows him.

He isn’t exactly sure where or when it happens – all he knows for sure is that one moment he’s running, crying, trailing rose petals through the grease-stained streets of Seoul and the next moment arms come around him and the wet pavement soaks the knees of his pants and still he cries. _I won’t go. I won’t, I don’t want to,_ he wails. Blood smears onto everything he touches but can’t figure out where it comes from. _No, no, no._

Jaemin’s matted faux fur coat shields them from the stares of passersby. _It’s okay. It’s okay. You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t wanna go. I’m not gonna make you._ His hair is the wrong color of pink for the words to be of any comfort.

Cells.

* * *

According to Dream’s recon team, the search for Johnny above ground – or _topside_ as Haechan refers to it – doesn’t start in earnest until a few days after his break from the compound. By day three, the streets swarm with TySci goons looking for the AWOL Model 95. 

When Johnny hears the report from his seat on the dais near Haechan’s feet, he snorts. Given the opportunity to wager money, he’d bet the collection team was dispersed exactly forty-eight hours after his disappearance. After all, he _is_ a cutting edge TySci prototype. Taeyong’s lawyers probably had kittens when they heard about his delinquency.

“Something to say?” Haechan nudges him with the toe of his boot.

Johnny slides off the platform and wades towards one of the tunnels. “Nope.”

Cells.

Life in the sewers quickly proves itself to be even more monotonous than life in the TySci compound. Replicants come and go, some new and some familiar. Jaemin and Yuta visit him as often as they can but not even their company can break up the torture of prowling the tunnel system in circuits. Sometimes Johnny lingers under manholes and listens through the thick metal to the sounds of the street above. He misses the city. He even misses the grey smudge of the sky.

Dark.

“I want to be the one who kills him,” Johnny tells Haechan one day, breaking the quiet between them as they watch rain fall in a perfect circle through the hole high in the vaulted ceiling of the hideout.

The silver head inclines. “We’re working on it.”

“Work on it faster.” His chest is an ugly place these days. Cold, dirty water and unforgiving stone fill all of the places in his heart that Taeyong used to occupy. “It has to be me. I have to do it. And I don’t have forever.”

Haechan studies the roof of the hideout for a long time. The slow breath he pushes out of his chest appears silver and delicate in the beam of the work lights. Johnny hates the constant chill in the tip of his nose and fingers. He wonders how Haechan has managed to live here for years. 

“Time always seems to get short right when you need it most,” the Dream leader mumbles.

Within one stem.

Yuta stops visiting, followed by Jaemin. Johnny wishes he’d thought to keep copies of their photos for himself. They’ve all been destroyed now, surely, thrown out by the operator of the pleasure house or even recycled by one of the other employees for some extra change. It’s only a matter of time before everyone who knew them – _knew_ them, not owned them – meets their expiration date. It hurts to think of his friends disappearing forever, no trace of their importance or influence or hearts. 

With Jaemin gone, pink leaves Johnny’s life for good.

Cells.

The inner circle of Dream consists of Haechan, Mark, and two other replicants: Jeno, personal companion to the lonely wife of one of the TySci bigwigs; and Renjun, an import from SpaceTap Corp with connections to the resistance in China. The tightly knit group of four incorporates him into their confidence due in no small part, Johnny suspects, to Mark vouching on his behalf. Renjun and Jeno are young compared to Johnny and Haechan but they make up for what they lack in experience with passion. Renjun openly mistrusts Johnny on principle alone and although Jeno makes a much kinder first impression, a wary look enters his eye when Taeyong comes up in their planning sessions. 

Taeyong comes up _often_ in their planning sessions. They are, after all, planning to murder him and destroy his life’s work.

Johnny dreams about killing Taeyong. Dreams are a new phenomenon. He never had them before but now visions of the life bleeding out of Taeyong’s eyes fill his sleeping hours. Perhaps it’s a side effect of his mainspring slowing down.

Cells.

As the weeks lapse into months and the year wanes away, Johnny keeps diligent tabs on his physical condition, watching for evidence of his body slowing to a stop. Everything continues to run smoothly. Any difference — if there _is_ any difference — is so minute that it would require state-of-the-art laboratory equipment to catch the discrepancy. Taeyong made him well. 

Within cells interlinked.

Two months pass, then four. Dream’s eyes in the city say that although the search effort for Johnny has scaled back significantly over time, the undercover collection agents can still be seen combing the streets for him. At eight months, Johnny’s serial number makes the blade runners’ watch list. He wants to laugh when he hears the news. Taeyong is afraid of him. Taeyong wants him dead. 

Two months before Johnny’s expiration date, Mark leans against the wall next to him and crosses his arms. “Early February,” he mutters, eyes on the dark water eddying beneath their feet. “Security drone on the inside is gonna get us an opening. Can you make it that long?”

The next beat of Johnny’s heart propels a burst of fire through his veins. “I can make it,” he confirms. “I have to.”

* * *

When the chosen day finally rolls around, Johnny can feel his internal clock nearing zero. If anyone notices his jumpiness, they must put it down to pre-mission jitters. No one asks him how he’s feeling. 

Haechan helps Johnny dress in the gear that Dream members have been strategically gathering for weeks in preparation for the raid. “I haven’t been topside in over three years,” he admits under his breath as he fastens Johnny into the black impulse-resistant vest. “It must be nerve-wracking to go up there again after so long underground.”

A heavy breath rushes out of Johnny’s chest. His temperature has been steadily climbing throughout the day. Sweat prickles under his armpits and at the small of his back after a few seconds in the armor.

Cells.

Haechan interprets the sound as an affirmative. He hums, tugging on the straps to make sure they’re secure. “I miss the sun,” he sighs.

Against the dark.

“I’ll try to bring a piece back for you,” Johnny grunts. The silver-haired replicant lowers his head to fiddle with the tactical belt but he isn’t quick enough to hide the way his lips quirk up into a smile.

Jeno pokes his head around the curve of the tunnel to let them know that the remainder of the infiltration team has gathered at the dais. Haechan pats Johnny’s arm but doesn’t offer any parting words. Johnny reminds himself that Haechan doesn’t know Johnny won’t be returning from the mission.

Within one stem.

The team stands in a cluster of mismatched models in the center of the main chamber. No one speaks despite standing so close to one another. Restlessness rolls off all of the Dream members in waves. Jeno reaches the group before Johnny and as he draws near Mark looks up from a pocket-sized holo displaying the mission details and waves Johnny over. When he reaches Mark’s side he shoves the holo into a pouch at the front of his vest and gestures half-heartedly at the circle of replicants.

“This is it,” he says lamely. “Me, you, Jeno.” Mark points two fingers at a couple of 99s. “San and Dino.” He jerks his head towards a skinny 02 and a 93 who, frankly, looks bored. “That’s Jisung and Luna. Are we good on introductions now or do we need to play a few icebreaker games before we go?”

The small team bundles into the trailer of a box truck that’s been backed up to the mouth of one of the tunnels. As they pass from the tunnel to the truck Johnny feels fresh air on his skin for the first time in almost a full year. He stands near the back while the others file past him and breathes the city into his lungs, deep, deep, deeper, so deep that his head spins. When he lowers the truck’s gate behind the last team member and the latch clunks into place on the other side Johnny almost wants to cry.

Cells.

Johnny counts each beat of his pulse that pounds in the vessels near his ear drum and uses the number to measure the time they spend rattling back and forth in the back of the old truck. The only light in the box comes from Mark’s holo. He fidgets with it constantly, muttering under his breath. The anxiety rubs off on the others, making them squirm where they’re seated against the walls of the box – with the exception of Luna, who seems almost inappropriately calm. Maybe she topples major corporations on the regular.

Every inch of Johnny’s skin tingles the closer they draw to the TySci compound. _To Taeyong_. It’s his imagination – it has to be. He rubs at his arms to make it stop. The feeling persists. A thousand tiny magnets embedded in every cell all straining towards home – _not home_ , _not anymore_. His biology pays him no mind.

Within cells interlinked.

The truck stops. Voices move back and forth around the outside of the box for several minutes, discussing shit all as security starts to inspect the truck. Everyone’s muscles tense as the latch rattles. 

_A blood black nothingness began to spin – A blood black nothingness began to spin – A blood black nothingness began –_

Focus. He has to focus. Johnny doesn't remember how they entered the compound but when he blinks the static away from his eyes, the familiar grey concrete walls rise on either side of him. He looks up and realises that all those times he wandered the corridors he'd never bothered to lift his eyes and see what was over his head.

It's more concrete. Nothing above, nothing below.

Cells. 

"Johnny?" Mark waits at his elbow and the frown on his face means something that Johnny is unable to qualify. "Where are you taking us?"

Johnny looks around. They've wandered into the east side of the compound, close to the replicant dormitories and just about as far as one can get from the laboratory. "The lab," he says.

"Isn't that underground?"

"Yes." He pushes past Mark and elbows through their little band of rebels, walking back the way they came. "It's this way." After a pause, his teammates follow.

"He's leading us in circles," Luna protests behind him. Her voice stays hushed but his ears tune into it through transistor fuzz like the dial on a shitty old radio.

"This whole fucking _place_ is a circle, what do you expect?" snaps Mark in retaliation. Johnny claws at his chest over the bulk of his pulse vest and adjusts the armor, trying in vain to make it sit more comfortably on his frame. Sweat collects in the hollow where the small of his back doesn't quite meet the inside of the ill-fitting vest. When Mark speaks again, it's in Johnny's ear with one hand gripping his elbow. "Are you okay?" he hisses. "You're kinda freaking me out. This is not the time to have second thoughts, dude."

Johnny licks sweat off of his upper lip. "I'm fine." Lie. “I’m not having second thoughts.”

Doubt shades Mark’s expression, but he releases Johnny’s arm and gestures for him to lead the way. Johnny takes a halting step forward. He should be able to navigate these corridors without a second thought but his mental map – it’s all zero one one zero zero one one zero zero one one one zero one zero one zero one one zero zero zero one one zero one one zero one zero one one zero one one zero zero one zero one zero one one zero zero one zero zero.

Cells.

_– a system of cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within –_

He looks up into Mark’s face and that’s odd because… why is that odd? It takes a moment for Johnny to remember but then it seems obvious. He’s lying half-propped against the wall in Doyoung’s clinic – no, not Doyoung. It’s Joy’s clinic now. It has been for awhile. So silly of him to forget.

“Johnny.” Mark’s hands squeeze Johnny’s arms. “What’s going on?”

“I’m dying,” replies Johnny. “My autoretirement is scheduled for a few hours from now.”

A dreadful silence eclipses the room. Over Mark’s shoulder, Jisung’s eyes go huge and round. It’s cute. Johnny smiles a little at the sight even though he knows it’s neither the time nor place. 

The data scroll unravelling as it loops through his processors translates into a faint buzz between his temples. He wonders if this is what it’s like when humans get drunk. Numbness tingles in the ends of his fingers and toes.

Mark sucks in a breath. “Okay,” he says slowly. If replicant brains were still made of machinery, Johnny thinks he would be able to hear the gears turning over as Mark pushes his C-level brain to problem solve. “How many hours? I need an exact time window.”

Johnny pulls at his vest. He can’t fucking _breathe_ with the damn thing strapped so tight around his chest, trapping his body heat inside the reinforced fabric and expediting the steady climb of his temperature. “Approximately one hundred and twenty seven minutes. Conservative estimate.”

“Approximately, huh,” Mark mutters. It sounds a little passive-aggressive, but Johnny can’t be sure through the haze steadily filling his head. “That’s not enough time, Johnny. You can’t get us to the lab and back to Lee’s quarters in two hours. We – we’ve gotta cut our losses with this one. Destroying the database is more important.”

Panic, bright and poisonous green, seeps in and renews the sharp edge of Johnny’s mind. He grabs the strap of Mark’s vest and yanks on it to make sure he has the other replicant’s full attention. “ _No_ ,” Johnny insists. “I have to get to Taeyong.”

“Then who’s gonna lead us to the lab?” Mark’s eyes widen. “We don’t know where the fuck we’re going without you.”

“I can take you there.” Every head in the room swings around and a long pause lapses between the gathered replicants as they take in Yeri’s little form. She rises from her hiding spot behind one of the exam tables and stares back at them with something akin to excitement blooming in her expression. “Why? What are you going to do?”

“Yeri.” If Johnny was more selfless, he probably wouldn’t feel quite so relieved to see the service drone that used to be his friend standing in the midst of sewer-dwelling rabble rousers. “This is Dream. I really need you to let them into Dr Lee’s lab. Can you do that for me?”

She barely glances at him when he addresses her, too busy eagerly surveying the faces of the strangers who have invaded her home, but he knows she hears him. “Where did you go?” she asks him. Accusation rings loud and clear in her voice. “Everyone’s been looking for you.”

When Johnny cuts his vision to the side, he sees the other Dream members looking at him. The old air of suspicion Johnny grew accustomed to facing when he first took refuge in Dream returns at the open familiarity from a member of Taeyong’s household. As he formulates his response, his hands fumble with the straps of his vest.

“I know,” he sighs. “I’m sorry for leaving without saying goodbye.” Yeri meets his gaze and she nods. The corners of her lips twitch in denial of the grin that so badly wants to spread across her face. She’s such an excitable replicant and she receives so little stimulation. Any change of pace must present such a thrill. “Yeri – if you help them, you’ll finally be able to see the city.”

Her lips purse, skeptical. “Dr Lee will grant me security clearance?”

“No clearance necessary. You can just – go.” Johnny tips his head towards the replicant still kneeling at his side. “Mark will take you. He lives there.”

Immediately, Yeri’s attention zips over to Mark. “You live in the city?” she breathes.

Mark glances at Johnny and slowly gets to his feet. He jerks his chin up-down in the most awkward affirmative Johnny’s ever seen. “Go with her,” he orders the five remaining members of the squad. “Johnny and I will go to Lee’s quarters. Plan to rendezvous back here and maybe she can help us find the way back to where we came in. Wonho will take care of us from there.”

The subunit automatically regroups into a more compact cluster and moves out the door. Yeri still blinks up at Mark, eyes wide and full of wonder. Mark, ever impatient, grabs her hand himself and pulls her out from behind the table. “Go,” he commands, pushing her gently in the direction of the door. She stumbles into Jeno and allows him to guide her into the corridor. Her gaze doesn’t leave Mark until she’s all the way out the door.

Within one stem.

“Okay. That was fucking lucky.” Mark turns and levels Johnny with an uncommonly steady look before crouching to help him unfasten his vest. Johnny never would have expected Mark to be so dependable in crisis.

“Johnny,” Mark says. His voice stays quiet so their retreating teammates won’t pick up his next words. “You have to promise me that you can do this.”

“I promise-”

“No, no.” He shakes his head. “I need you to think about it and really mean it. If I take you to Lee and you choke, you’ll be putting our entire operation at risk. That’s not just the lives of our team, it’s also Haechan’s life’s work. It’s everything Dream is about.” The last fastener comes free and Johnny finally peels the vest off of his chest. “Swear to me you can do this. And fuckin’ mean it.”

“I mean it, Mark.” Johnny stares back, unwavering. Does it count as a lie if you aren’t sure whether or not it’s the truth? “I can do this. But we have to _hurry_.”

Mark buys it. “Okay. Lead the way, killer.”

Without the weight of the armor on his chest, the hot fog clouding his brain lifts a fraction and navigating the compound becomes child’s play again. It helps that Johnny travelled the path between the clinic and Taeyong’s quarters hundreds, if not thousands, of times while he lived here. One hand floats up of its own accord and trails along the smooth surface of the wall. Just like old times.

Within cells interlinked.

They pass the library. Johnny retracts his hand before it can touch the wooden doors. He thinks if he were to touch them he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from going in. _And what is love?_ On long, lonely nights in the tunnels he would recite the poems he remembered but Keats’s words don’t fit his mouth right anymore. _It is a doll dress’d up_. 

Interlinked.

The chunks of lost time grow greater between each moment of clarity as the buzzing in his head cresendoes. His feet carry him to Taeyong’s quarters of their own accord, following the same irresistible magnetism that first brought him there all those years ago. A vague impression of Mark’s voice reaches him, asking a question – something about time, or maybe asking if he’s okay. He can’t decipher the words through the haze. The iris recognition lock on the bedroom door still opens for Johnny; the lights rise for his biosignature. 

Within cells interlinked.

Taeyong sits up, disoriented by the abrupt awakening. He looks tiny and vulnerable all alone in the center of the big bed with the sheets puddled around his waist. 

“Johnny?” he mumbles, voice tiny from confusion. The scientist’s eyes slide over to Mark standing just beyond Johnny’s shoulder and back again. “Johnny,” he repeats, stronger this time.

Johnny watches Taeyong swing his legs over the side of the bed and stand. His fear telegraphs in the effort it takes for the man to keep his hands from shaking at his sides. 

“Honey, I’m home,” Johnny replies. It wavers in midair between them.

The scientist’s lips twitch, acknowledging the irony. He takes a deep breath. It hitches in his chest, dies in his throat along with whatever words meant to follow it. His eyes glitter. He seems unable to do anything but stand and stare. There’s too much to say. It hides in his eyes just beyond the veil of unshed tears. _And what is love?_ _Love you. I love you._

Interlinked.

At the sight of his maker, Johnny’s new directive goads him onwards. With his inhibitions dampened by his dying brain, the instinct to end Taeyong’s life makes itself known in his palms and his scalp as an itch begging to be scratched. 

Behind him, Mark huffs. “Johnny,” he warns in a low voice. Johnny wishes everyone would stop saying his name like that, all heavy with significance that he can’t figure out with his head spinning this way. He covers his ears with the heels of his hands – just for a second, just to get his bearings, just –

_– within one stem, and dreadfully dreadfully dreadfully dreadfully dreadfully dreadfully dreadfully dreadfully dreadfully distinct against the dark against the dark against the dark distinct –_

Taeyong’s nails scrabble at the back of his hand, clawing at the gaps between Johnny’s fingers in a futile attempt to pry them open from their death grip around Taeyong’s throat. Blood runs hot and red over his knuckles in a steady stream from Taeyong’s face. His nose looks broken and his teeth are covered in blood as well. 

Panic and anger surge together through Johnny’s brain. He snatches his hand away as though he’s been burned and stumbles backwards a few steps, bumping into Mark, who shoves him back towards Taeyong.

“Fucking finish it already, man,” he growls. 

Johnny flails out with one arm and pushes Mark towards the door. “Shut up,” he snaps. “Stop, shut up for one fucking second, I –” 

Taeyong lays on the floor, winded from Johnny’s chokehold, but not for long – he’s already using the door of the wardrobe to pull himself up, eyes darting towards his desk and the panic button underneath its surface. 

“Don’t,” Johnny shouts, pointing at the scientist. Taeyong freezes. “Don’t fucking move.” 

It’s a battle to think clearly over the data noise in his brain. He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. “You were gonna kill me, Taeyong, you told me you loved me and then you were gonna retire me like you retired Jungwoo and Doyoung and fuck knows how many others.” He opens his eyes and pins Taeyong in place with his gaze. “You’re so fucking smart. How could you do this to us and still – how can you play god and still come home and sleep next to me knowing what you’ve done? Knowing how we’re treated?”

Now Taeyong shakes his head. His hands sprawl out in front of him in the universal body language of someone approaching a rabid animal in peace. They’re so wet with his own blood that they gleam in the low light. He takes a cautious step towards Johnny. “I didn’t – I never would have, Johnny. Not if I’d known.”

“Never would’ve done _what_? Known _what_?” Johnny cries out in frustration. He feels so fucking _lost_. When did everything become so impossible to understand? His arms float up, reaching towards Taeyong without his permission.

Cells.

Across the room, Mark shouts, “What are you waiting for? _Kill_ him!”

_– cells, interlinked, within cells interlinked, within one stem, dreadfully –_

“Johnny,” Taeyong breathes, so close. Eyes so sad, looking up at him. So big and so sad. “Baby.”

_– distinct, dreadfully distinct, dark, against the dark, a tall white fountain played –_

He watches his own hands fly out and shove against Taeyong’s chest. The push sends the latter flying into the doors of the wardrobe so hard that the mirrored glass shatters at the impact, creating a starburst of cracks and glass shards with Taeyong’s body at the epicenter. Life repeats itself: zeroes and ones. This time Taeyong screams.

The thing in Johnny’s brain that everyone calls his _function_ propels him over to Taeyong. He twists his fists into the front of Taeyong’s sleep shirt. Glass showers onto the floor as Johnny slams Taeyong’s body into the wardrobe over and over and over and over – Taeyong’s skull snaps back and forth, limp and heavy like a doll’s head. _And what is love?_ Thin droplets of his blood scatter across Johnny’s face.

“Fuck you,” Johnny snarls. “Fuck you.”

Taeyong paws at Johnny’s chest weakly. “Please,” he coughs. A mouthful of blood and spit gushes down his chin and onto his shirt. “Johnny, stop – please –” New smears of red appear on the mirror each time his head ricochets off the glass.

He releases his hold on Taeyong’s shirt. The scientist’s legs buckle immediately; he falls to the floor in a heap. Johnny stares at his own muddled reflection in the glass. Blood freckles both of his cheeks. He looks like a monster.

At his feet, Taeyong wheezes, desperately trying to push air in and out of his lungs. “Johnny,” he croaks. “Baby, please. I’ll reset your mainspring, I’ll – we can be together. Please, _please_ , I love you.”

Johnny pulls his eyes away from the glass to look down at his maker. One of Taeyong’s hands touches the hem of his pants, clumsily trying to cling to the fabric. He steps back out of reach. Taeyong’s fist closes around empty air.

“Don’t say you love me,” Johnny rasps. His throat hurts. One boot moves to rest atop Taeyong’s chest. “Don’t lie to me, Taeyong. Not now.”

“I do love you,” Taeyong gasps. Johnny grinds his foot down against Taeyong’s sternum to feel the ribs pop and break. All of his nerve endings burn from the top of his scalp down to the spaces beneath his nails as his physiology begins to self-destruct. Every part of his body, every single piece of him all the way down to the very last atom’s atom wails, _Stop, stop, stop, wrong, wrong, wrong._

“You don’t.” One of Taeyong’s ribs breaks clean; the scientist cries out but the sound chokes off when bone punctures his lung. 

There’s poetry to this. Life drains out of Taeyong’s eyes and Johnny’s molecules pull themselves apart, burning up, desperate to get away from one another, desperate to tear themselves free from the form they were bound together to create. Johnny sobs and it _hurts_. He realises that’s what that feeling must be, _hurt_. It’s foreign to him until he presses into it, feels around its edges and then, _Ah, yes. Hello there. I know you._ It looks back at him from his own eyes in the fragmented reflection of the broken mirror.

When he removes his foot from Taeyong’s chest, the scientist heaves for breath. Oxygen escapes the hole in his lungs in a wet gurgle.

A tall white fountain played.

No human knows for sure what a replicant experiences during autoretirement. Johnny thinks it’s a little like turning pages in an old photo album, yellow with age: full of people and places he’ll never be able to see again. The photos turn into numbers when he looks too closely. So – he stops looking closely. He skims. It’s easier to believe they will still be there, that coming back is a possibility. It’s easier than reaching out for one last look and forgetting what he was looking at while he’s still watching it disintegrate. 

Johnny’s photo album is mostly full of Taeyong. Taeyong, Taeyong, Taeyong, interwoven into Johnny so tightly that he can’t see the spaces between them.

Within cells interlinked.

They’re alone. Johnny doesn’t know where Mark went – or maybe he knows and just doesn’t remember, or maybe Mark was never with him at all. He doesn’t know but he’s glad. Mark doesn’t belong in their bedroom, in the place he and Taeyong love one another. A headache spikes Johnny’s temples.

Taeyong looks up at him, eyes blank as his body goes into shock. Bloodstains blossom across his shirt. Johnny can’t tell if its all dripped down from his mouth or if one of his ribs has pierced through his chest. Either way, it’s too much to not be fatal. 

When a replicant completes its directive, what does it do? What’s left? All Johnny feels is _emptiness_ and _hurt_ and _longing_. His cells burn in all the places Taeyong has carved his name into them.

Cells.

Johnny belongs to Taeyong. He never needed a serial number to tell him that. He loved Taeyong before he knew anything – when the only thing he knew was the hand on his cheek coaxing him out of the dark.

Interlinked.

“Taeyong,” Johnny whimpers. He’s forgetting – he can’t remember why he came here. He wishes for Taeyong’s hands in his hair and the artificial sun in his eyes. His feverish brain grasps for words with slippery palms as he half-kneels, half-falls to the floor next to his maker. “I’m sorry.” 

His arms, so strong just a few minutes ago, can’t hold his weight for more than a few seconds before they buckle and he drops onto the scientist’s crumpled chest. Johnny wonders if Taeyong can feel the way the heart he gave Johnny hammers for him. He coughs and his own shade of red mixes with Taeyong’s on the white canvas of his shirt until the two are indifferentiable. 

Within cells interlinked.

Johnny clumsily moves his legs – did they ever move the way he asked them to or was that just a memory plant? Suddenly he isn’t sure – to push himself up Taeyong’s body so they can be on eye level. His head lolls forward and knocks against Taeyong’s, sending a spear of pain through Johnny’s temples. 

“Taeyong,” he whispers again. Taeyong’s pupils constrict and dilate as they try to focus on Johnny’s face. Johnny waits for the fog clouding them to clear a little before he continues. “I love you. I love you so much.” 

Taeyong’s breath rattles in short, weak bursts. Eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, ears, eyes, eyes, eyes. 

“I know now. I know what it means. Your poem.” Johnny’s eyelids pull themselves towards one another but he forces them open again. He doesn’t want to lose sight of Taeyong. “Do you hear me, Taeyong? I know what it means now and it’s wrong. It isn’t a doll.” 

No answer. It’s okay – Johnny doesn’t remember what it was he meant to say in the first place.

His circulatory system fails. He curls inwards around Taeyong’s broken little body, instinctively shielding their vital organs. Four years seems like an eternity until it isn’t, until it’s the blink of an eye and eternity lives in the spaces between the last few beats of his heart, the last expansion of his lungs, the last wave of electricity that ripples through his brain. Bits and pieces of what he thinks might be poetry circulate in the hot, empty space between his ears. _And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up. What is love? It is dress’d up. What is it? It is a doll. And what is a doll?_

Cells.

_Love you, love you, love you,_ Johnny wants to say. He thanks life for allowing him to stay long enough that the pain of losing it outweighed the pain of living it.

Within cells interlinked.

Taeyong’s pale lips move on their last breath. He fails to understand what they say.

**Author's Note:**

> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/teddykun)   
>  [ twitter](https://twitter.com/kittyong)


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